This past Summer I decided to schedule my time. I bought a big appointment calendar, like the ones in nail salons.
On a Friday or Sunday afternoon, I take a look at the following week. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, exercise and reoccurring activities that are the same from week to week are recorded. Dentist and Doctors’ appointments, hair, lunch and dinner dates are carefully written in the correct time slot.
Those are the bones of my days. When people buy houses they mention, bones. “This house has good bones” My weeks need good bones or boundaries. Structure was missing from my life and that’s why I started scheduling every single thing, morning, noon and night, even the time I plan to wake up and go to sleep.
However, one change made all the difference in the world. I now schedule social phone calls and I never schedule two phone calls back to back. I allow time before moving on to the next activity to give myself a break for various things like water, bathroom, rest, and maybe some deep beathing. When we allow ourselves enough time to transition or travel from one activity to another, we are not so frantic and always on time.
I’ll actually text someone now and ask if they’d like to talk Friday at 4. If it works, great, if not, I have my calendar in front of me and we immediately find an alternate date and a mutually agreed upon time and place rather than putting it off. My big black book saves me from writing important information on scratch paper, Kleenex boxes or the backs of envelopes.
What a difference, for the better, it’s made! I’m a lot calmer. In the past, if I didn’t have time to talk, I’d attempt to write a quick text. Truth be told, I end up spending way too much time typing then realizing too late how much time I wasted. Dictating always involves frustrating time-consuming auto correction. Besides, my texts are way too long and no one likes long texts! That’s another story!
Actually, no one calls anyone anymore unless there is an emergency or we suddenly have something important we want to share at that very moment and it simply can’t wait. If we make or answer random calls, chances are we forget the reason for the call. How many of us need to return calls yet put them off until we can find a chunk of time, although we never do.
However, If I schedule a weekly or by weekly gab session, we don’t have as much to catch up on. This has been so successful for me, and it works out even better if I set a time limit on the call before I make it. I found if I text one of my kids and say, “Do you have about 15 minutes Sunday at 1 to face time?” Surprisingly, they do. If I don’t give them a date and time, they are afraid they’ll get stuck on the phone with me. Boundaries are essential to our well-being. They work, making life so much easier.
Stop asking why they keep doing it and start asking why you keep allowing it. Unknown
Boundaries: If someone throws a fit because you set boundaries. It’s just more evidence the boundary is needed. Unknown
The only people who get upset about you setting boundaries are the ones who were benefitting from you having none. Unknown
YES! This is me completely. You just have to keep some kind of structure. I retired 3 years ago at 48 and I felt like my world was flipped upside down. I worked my whole life and everything was scheduled. Unless I got that 2am call that they needed me……that would screw my whole day up.
I even scheduled in my DEVICE FREE Days. The company supplied me with a phone/laptop so I was accessible 24/7. So when I could turn everything off …it was BEAUTIFUL.
Now that I am retired … it took me a bit to get my feet moving. I mean…I would wake up thinking OH NO… I over slept…I need to call my boss. WHAT DAY IS IT? I even had nightmares that I was running for my office and I couldn’t find my ID Badge….I was late for meetings….I couldn’t find a million dollars. It took almost half a year for those to stop.
So like you….I bought a calendar a few years ago because it was similar to the one I had on my desk in my office. I mean…we kept one in the kitchen all of the time for my sons…appointments…practice…games. But after they grew up….we didnt need one. Now…I don’t use paper calendars I just utilize my iPhone calendar. I log one event and it automatically goes to my laptop and iPad. So easy.
I black out hours on my daily calendar for my usual routine stuff. Meditation, tea, gardening, cooking, If I am going to paint I black out those hours. Even reading….I usually just know I will read on Sun/Mon/Tues so I leave the TV off. Sometimes on those days I might just log in online early if I don’t feel like picking up a book. But I don’t like to be online all day so I leave my laptop in my room. I can check “Thoughts” from my phone….but I can not log into “Thoughts” from my phone. But if I see I should log in for SPAM and none of the other Admins are around I will go downstairs and log in. And why I can’t log in from my phone? I don’t know my password. Hahaha….its saved to my laptop. Yes…I have a horrible memory.
AND…. I recently got a new phone number because I kept getting text and calls from family friends trying to arrange lunch dates and dinner dates. WHICH I agreed to attend one with my sons and it was an ambush. She brought some friends who were trying to get my sons ears. My sons …well how can I put this. They are on a business board that they have to vote on big decisions at times. And when there are important issues people will try and go through me to try and get to them. I am their secretary so to speak. No one has their private phone numbers. So I finally just changed my # because I was turning my phone off almost half the day at times to avoid those friends. Yes…they are friends….but they just have to learn BOUNDARIES (like you mentioned). So I COMPLETELY know what you are saying. Also…anyone who knows me knows….it can take days for me to respond to a text…but eventually I will.
Using my calendar is NEEDED. It saved me so many times when someone out of the blue would say can you do lunch tomorrow. And like you said….PHONE CALLS. There are certain hours of the day I make them and accept them. My ringer is usually off. Like tonight…I just got off the phone with my mother. We talked over 2 hours. And I told my sister I will talk to her tomorrow night. (probably 3 hours)
There was a time I could handle all these things and take all the calls…..but as I am getting older….I just put more importance to my routine. I need routine…..from morning sage burning and prayer….to drinking my cup of tea just staring out at the ocean. My spirit needs this to tackle all that may be thrown my way through out the day.
You got some Healthy Good Bones Rosemary 😉