The overwhelming to do list

I’m currently ensconced on my sofa, with a blanket and a gin and tonic. The dogs are quietly sleeping beside me and the rain is gently pouring down outside. I can hear the steady dripping of the water on the patio table beside the lounge window. It should be a calm and peaceful moment, but instead I feel anxious, tearful and overwhelmed.

My woodland border, the one part of the garden that feels under control

Everywhere I look in my house, garden and general life, there are things to do. I’m a productive person, I spend my free time making lists and planning projects, slowly chipping away at the minutiae of life admin, daily tasks and overarching goals. Ostensibly, on paper, I can say I have achieved things. The recently completed patio. The potting bench. Raised beds - three in total, with a fourth one loading. I’ve built a log store TV unit, and hung multiple shelves, pictures, mirrors and hooks. But there is always so much more to do.

My renovation task list spans 3 columns and 2 full pages in my notepad. It’s split into tasks I can do by myself, tasks that need Andrew’s input, and tasks we need to outsource to contractors. Every time I feel I’m close to completing an item on my list, something else pops up. It feels never ending.

I appreciate the inherent privilege in complaining about this ‘problem’. No one forced me to buy a renovation house, or to have self-imposed high standards (in my opinion) as to décor, aesthetics, function and design. I wanted a big garden, so can’t now complain about having to manage that space. I love our house, and I especially love my garden. But sometimes it just all feels like so much work.

It’s the same with life admin. Just as I manage to organise myself to book the car in for its service, I get a text from Boots telling me I need my eyes checked. The doctor texts to say my implant isn’t due to be replaced for another 2 years (result!) but a week later I get a letter calling me for my smear test (boo). We’re trying to save some money and pay off a credit card, but we need dog food and contact lens solution and we both ideally need our hair cut. Do we pay enough into our pensions? Should we try to pay off our student loans? A button fell off a sofa cushion, and I tore a hole in a pair of jeans. I can mend both of these things, but when? I already have a pile of clothes and homewares to be mended, abandoned in my craft room (which is basically just a room full of boxes, since I’m only a third the way through putting up shelves).

I don’t have any answers to these questions, other than a relentless feeling of time slipping through my fingers, like grains of sand. All the time I spend organising and building and planning and compiling, I could be spending with my animals. They lead such short little lives. Will having an organised filing cabinet feel like a good use of time when they’re gone? How can you dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today (a quote from James Dean, who never had to consider his retirement investments), when you need to pay a mortgage and research replacement boilers because there’s no hot water?

When I feel like this, I often turn to knitting, and now gardening, for that moment of peace and mindfulness. A snack, a cuppa, and a nap can also work wonders (toddler rules apply).

I don’t know anything about poetry, but my all time favourite book is the Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings would be in my top 5. In both of these works of fiction, a version of this walking song is written by Bilbo Baggins:

The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

I think about this poem often, it feels like it applies to so many aspects of life. In a later version, when Bilbo is old and fading, he replaces ‘eager’ with ‘weary’ and makes minor changes to the text that lead the Road to continue without him. In my current melancholy state of mind, it reminds me that time, and all it encompasses, continues regardless of your feelings, or what is happening in the present moment. The passage of time is inevitable and inescapable. You can rail against it, but this too shall pass. There’s freedom in accepting that.