Busy, Busy

I've become one of those obnoxiously busy people...and I don't think that I really meant to do it. Time was that I would go to work and then come home. Maybe I had a writing project going on that I would work on for a couple of hours in the evening, but that was about it.

Now, I seem to have jam-packed my days to the point that I barely know what's going on. I work full-time managing a staffing company (which I don't enjoy, but it pays well)...part-time covering high school sports for a newspaper (which I do enjoy, but the pay sucks)...and then I help run a community theater (which I kind of enjoy and don't get paid at all for).

Add on to that the, you know, kids stuff of soccer and t-ball and school and homework...and being married and having a house and a dog and two cats...and by the end of the day, I usually am so far behind on everything that there's no real hope of getting caught up.

Here's the thing though...whenever someone tells me how busy they are, I usually hear them turning this or that down. "Oh, I would love to help, but I have to do so-and-so," they'll say. My problem is that I never seem to manage to turn anything down...much to the consternation of my wife.

I want to say no...I really do. But, then thanks to that Catholic school influence of my formative years, I end up feeling guilty, so I end up agreeing to do whatever it is that someone wants. I really need to figure out how to change that, because a whole lot of stuff that I do are things that I don't want to do.

Otherwise, I'm going to end up dying with an 800-page "To Do" list.