Moovin & Groovin

There’s too much to do, so I sit frozen in my bed and let the walls cave in. There’s too much to do, so my laundry withers in a corner, dried out by the sun and wind and traffic noises coming in from the window I forgot to close. 

There’s too much to do, so I do everything else, wavering between whether I should do a little bit of it all or deep dive into one. I do neither. There’s too much to do, so I get a coffee to have energy to do what I need to do. I can’t decide which cafe to go to, so I go back home.

There’s too much to do, so I look at my phone. There’s too much happening on my phone, so I run. I move and leave and tell people about what they should do when they visit where I was, but I didn’t actually do those things because I was doing other things instead. 

There’s too much to do, so I read my book to escape into a different world. I read one page, thinking about all the things I have to do. I read the page again, thinking about how good I’m doing at reading and forgetting about the things I have to do. I read through the page again, watching myself as I do it.

There’s too much to do, so I stare blankly at the world around me. People look at me as if I’m lost in thought. Instead, a melody echoes through my head. There’s too much to do, but I have a song in my head that I can’t stop thinking about. I have to sing the whole song before I can do anything. It starts again on a loop. I can’t do anything until the song finishes. 

There’s too much to do, but I’m tired of complaining about how much there is to do. I dig a knife into my stomach, screaming, and force myself to do anything, just one thing, then I can do the rest. I take a shower. I go for a walk. I walk and walk and think about how I wouldn’t need to do all the things I need to do if I were crushed by a building or hit by a car. I go back home, take a shower, and force myself into a deep sleep. 

There’s too much to do, so I do it all at once. In a frenzy, I do it all. I wash my laundry, close my window, make plans, do my work, dry my laundry, become successful, have a baby, go to a yoga class, go to the gym, figure out my dreams, reinvent myself, get smarter, educate myself on the global political climate, find inner peace, call my mom, call my brother, cry, and question why I didn’t start sooner. 

There’s nothing to do now. And I’m bored. I take a shower, lay back on my bed, just for five minutes, I say, or else I’ll lose my momentum. Just for five minutes, as I feel the walls close around me once more. 

There’s too much to do, so I go outside and look at the grass. I look at the waves, I look at the seabirds stumbling over their knobby webbed feet, I look at the way the sun colors the whole sky. I look at the people; the people smoking, the people talking, the people touching. I think about how much they have to do and whether or not they’re doing it. I look at the grass and think about how it has nothing to do. I lay down in the grass to steal its energy, to give it something to do. It doesn’t oblige me, it just continues.

There’s too much to do, but I give up. I succumb, I lie in the grass and become the grass. I watch the clouds turn from white to pink to blue. I get up and think of what to do now, which is different than what to do always. I eat something I wasn’t hungry for, drink something I wasn’t thirsty for, take a picture of the sky.

I return to my walls and stand them up straight, patching them up with paste and letting them harden, telling them to just hold on a little longer. And then I continue.