Yesterday I wrote about decision fatigue. Writing does help me get what’s inside out so I can look at it from a different perspective. As I thought about what I wrote yesterday a few thoughts kept rolling around in my head:
- I FEEL OVERWHELMED BECAUSE I AM NOT GIVING MYSELF ENOUGH TIME TO RECUPERATE FROM THE WORK I DO, ESPECIALLY THE EMOTIONAL WORK. I NEED TO GET BETTER AT PRACTICING SABBATH.
- I AM ALREADY AUTOMATING LOTS OF MY DECISIONS TO HELP MYSELF, BUT I DO NEED TO GET BETTER AT PRACTICING THE DECISIONS I AUTOMATE.
- I THINK A PART OF PRACTICING SABBATH IS TAKING TIME TO STOP AND “CLEAN THE GARAGE”.

I don’t have a garage, but having an actual garage is not necessary to practice “cleaning the garage”. Cleaning the garage is a term I heard from a men’s lifestyle teacher, Neil Kennedy. Neil teaches that when a man is overwhelmed one of the keys to dealing with the blinding stress that comes with the overwhelm is to assert control over some area of his life. It doesn’t have to be the area or the thing that is causing the overwhelm. Just the act of organizing and controlling some aspect of his environment creates a sense of calm that helps put life back into proper perspective.
I think part of sabbathing for me is going to involve “cleaning the garage”. Doing and completing some task that betters my environment will help me to regain and maintain focus in the midst of the many decisions that lie before me.
It’s Spring.

The snow has gone from the Vicarage (mostly). The blackbirds and robins have returned.

Flocks of grackles and starlings are visiting my feeders once again. The air is filled with birdsong. The world is waking up.
In the midst of the waking world I have a side lawn that needs to be planted, and a giant pile of fieldstone to turn into stone walls and stone planters.

There is a rat warren to cement shut.

And then there is the other side of the house with all the overgrown gardens to prune and beautify. That should leave me enough garage to clean for a while as Spring springs into being.
Of course there is also the option to nap rather than clean.

Maybe I can do a little of both and!