Sensory OVER - LOAD

The last year has been full of stuff going on - not really for me, my life has progressed as before, but for our country. We've had a contentious election and then yesterday was the "big" day for all of us. No matter our political view, this day, today, means something - one way or the other. Who is to know? Hope is meaningless. We all hope for good. Faith is what counts, do you have faith in what's to come? Stress is the one certain thing.

I am a news junkie. Fox News goes 24-7 in our home and car (thank you XM). Thanks to them I am able to hear both sides of every story and make informed decisions. But that is a ton of info. Then I have 3 different e-mail accounts (home, work, Yahoo), which I check A LOT. There is Facebook and Twitter. I have abandoned My Space because it isn't as friendly as Facebook. I have several blogs that I would love to read daily. I have books that I am in the midst of reading (5 right now). I am starting a class this Saturday. There is my family who I want to spend time with. My husband who I like to get in the car, put the top down and just ride with. The daily newspaper, the crossword puzzle, my work, several TV shows I watch, they are TiVo'd so I can FF through the commercials, but I need time to watch them, over 30000 pictures that I need to catalog, restore, scrap, Photoshop - 1000s waiting to be scanned, a clean desk that has become cluttered again, and on and on and on.

There are only 24 hours in a day, as we all know. If I am home alone on the weekends I turn the TV off & try to get some stuff done, but it never will be. But the question is - what would I do if I didn't have all of this to do? Once I worked in an office where my only job was to answer the phone. I was told that I could read or do whatever I wanted. Pre-internet. So I read and I read and I read. I became more and more depressed. Why, because we NEED something to do. We aren't meant to just loll around doing nothing. At least those with my type of personality (if that idea is even real). I am not a complete A but maybe an A-.

So what about you? What keeps you busy, takes up all your time, what would you do without it? Are these little distractions time stealers or are they time fillers? Are they positive or negative? I guess that is up to you and what you do with your time and how it affects you mentally. As for me, they are pleasant ways to get through the day. I need a little stress in my life, so if I reach a patch where I am mainly stress free from lives bumps and bruises, I have my artificial stress - the in box, the pile of books, the hard drives & boxes full of photographs, the to do lists. Because you know, those things can go by the way, but they create that feeling of HAVING TO DO SOMETHING, being needed, having a PURPOSE.

Is that what goals are - ways of inducing stress? No longer do we have the stress of trying to survive day by day, now we need goals. We need lists. Wouldn't our ancestors laugh at us when they came in from a hard day on the farm trying to eek out some food for the coming winter, to see us sit down & make a little list of goals. Yep yep. But, we need it - we need that stress, artificial or real. It is necessary for survival. So next time you suffer from sensory overload, just lay back and appreciate it for what it is - sharpening your senses for survival.