I’m really dating myself here, referring to dials rather than touch screens, but that’s part of who I am, old. I also feel like a radio these days, needing to tune out but not wanting to lose the signals that enrich my life. It’s like when the country hour comes on our local station. I can handle a few of these artists, actually enjoy the occasional tune here. If I turned the whole thing off, I’d miss the good songs. Or, if the tuning is nudged off-station, I don’t pull the plug, I fine-tune the setting. On days when I need silence, I don’t take a hammer to the radio, I turn it off, and save the rail for a day when the music is welcomed.

I just wish controlling the signals from life were as easy.

When exhausted and overwhelmed, I have no energy for separating and sorting. Every emotion, request, appointment, deadline, and thought swirls together until a huge knotted clump of confused, angry half-deeds knocks about my frazzled brain until I am paralyzed by anxiety and frustration. In desperate need of relief, I think about quitting my work, my writing, my career, and in my darkest hours, life itself, anything to make the noise and feelings stop. what I need to do, though, is not pull the plug but tweak the tuning. I may need to focus on one task for awhile rather than split my energy between two or three. I may need a station playing different music; a change, after all, is as good as a rest. Or, I may just need to turn things off for awhile. Take a mental health day and sit on the beach, in my room with a candle, or on my deck surrounded by trees. No electronics, no people, just me.

In my 19 days of exploring ways to cool the burnout and Keep It Super Simple, I have learned that never will the world change for me – only I can slow down or declutter my world. Requests will continue to pour in, calendar dates will keep piling up … It is up to me to put them in their place: Accept or Decline, Save or Delete. That way, I can hear the signals I want, even when the batteries are low. Be selective now, to avoid total meltdown in the future.

Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.