Living Life at Full Volume

It's been a long time since I've had a chance to blog. I've been out of the country, and when I got back it's straight into crunch time at work. We've got a client with a tight deadline, and I got duped into the project management role. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but it has sucked every bit of my time and energy since I've landed.

So, what does this have to do with Living Life at Full Volume? It's about taking the fragmented pieces of life, and enjoying each and every one of them. It's about taking life, and cranking up the volume so you hear each and every note.

September is a busy month. It's especially busy with Doug starting Kindergarten. It's not so much the starting Kindergarten that's the problem, it's the fact that with his 5th birthday he transitions from one medical system to another. We get to go through an entire new set of assessments and meetings to train up another set of people on who Doug is. Don't get me wrong, their all great people, but we've spent a couple months now in transition meetings. First you have to transition out of one program, then you get to transition into another. And the binder of paperwork and reviews gets bigger. Toss in dealing with the school system - which is full of stories both good and bad. Will he be approved for the funding he needs? Will he GET the funding he is approved for? (Schools receive funding on a per student basis, but those funds are spent at the discretion of the local school. Doug's "bucket of money" may be pilfered from to go to other students.) The first few meetings with the school have been very vague on what exactly Doug's support will be. Nobody wants to say anything for sure.

So. Life is busy. Crazy busy. 2-3 school/medical appointments per week, unlimited overtime at work, seeing my family after a month away, and fall program startup season.

This is leaving me with little chunks of time scattered like a shotgun pellets across my calender. I find myself sitting down in little 1/2 hour chunks of time trying to do something while my mind races wildly away to what is going to happen next.

What I need to do is Live Life at Full Volume. Now is for now. If I'm working - I need to focus on work. No distractions, no "I'll just finish this off while I wait for the download to finish". If I'm helping the kids with their homework I will focus on their needs - not try to catch the news hour from the other room. When it's time to relax - that means relax. Ignore the e-mail, the MSN, the phone. Concentrate on relaxing. This is the hardest of all. I can make my body stop working, but my mind keeps churning.

Multitasking may seem to be an efficient way to live life - but do you really LIVE life?