Prioritizing

What Do You Do On Overload?

Life has been a bit much recently, I hate to admit it. Don’t get me wrong, I know of many people in worse straights. My best friend just lost her husband, my mother-in-law is in the hospital with heart problems. My issues pale in comparison.

It’s just handling them is difficult and would be incredibly expensive without the generosity of my sister and her family. Let me back up.

December 23rd, I totaled our family car. If nothing else, it was certainly a bummer, but we were blessed in that no one in the entire five-car-pile-up was injured. While we waited three weeks for our over-worked and under-staffed insurance agency to respond, I had to drive my husband’s manual transmission car. Since I have half of an ankle missing, the bone has threatened to break for years and it became increasingly obvious that the stick shift would do the trick if I kept driving it.

It began to look like we’d either have to shell out money for a rental or I’d have to keep going until I couldn’t. Quite possibly breaking a bone while behind the wheel. Hence, the generosity of my sister; she loaned me her automatic. My ankle still hurts five weeks after the accident, but it has improved and has not broken for which I’m more grateful than I can express.

Then the much-aligned stick-shift’s transmission died and the car with it. It will cost more than it’s worth to fix the Honda. We now have no automobile of our own and I’m once again reduced to playing taxi-mom via the borrowed car. This brings me up to today.

Monday morning, I need to somehow find time to take my husband to work, get the pink-eye infected daughter to a clinic or doctor and see a family friend interested in selling me her car. The latter will be a HUGE blessing if it comes to fruition, but I still find myself wondering how I’ll make it all happen AND find time to do what I want, which brings me to today’s question:

What happens to your writing when you’re overwhelmed? Do you still work? Do you somehow click into fifth gear and get more productive, or do you have to set it aside and handle life?