Boundaries
When I was in my late twenties, mom of two toddlers, I was an easy mark. If anyone asked me to serve on a committee or volunteer for a job in our church or our community, I ALWAYS said yes.
A wise friend took me aside one day and said, “You know, Sue, if you work yourself to death, nobody’s going to stand over your grave and say, ‘Poor girl, she did it all for us.’ They’re going to stand over your grave and say, ‘What a fool!.'”
As a novelist, I’ve learned that if I don’t set boundaries, I lose my writing time. I try to curtail inconvenient phone conversations with a polite comment along the lines of, “I’ll make this quick. I’m in the middle of my writing time.’ (People don’t know if you don’t tell them.) Our household password is PYOW. Pull Your Own Weight. If you wear the coat, you hang it up. If you make the mess, you clean it up. (We’re still working on that one, especially with the dog.) The dog HAS learned to wait for his walk until after my writing time. I schedule activities and interviews in the afternoons. (I’m a morning person, so that’s when I do my most intensive writing.)
Now I’m the first to admit that I haven’t perfected this boundary thing. So how about share with me and other Blog readers how you attack this problem. What works for you? I’d love to know!
Blessings, Sue Harrison
You know, Wes, I have never thought of it that way – selfishly locking someone else out of the activity. Thank you! That will definitely make it easier to place my boundary lines.
There are all sorts of boundaries — work boundaries, play boundaries, social boundaries, boundaries for being alone, and more. Each area can be overdone, or “underdone.” Excessive time spent in a particular area can cause problems. It’s easy to say, “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done.” Is this really the case, or is it selfishly locking someone else out of the activity? When working full time, I always provided time to get out into nature, putting work problems aside, and appreciating things usually taken for granted. Sometimes the problems at hand either disappeared, or seemed too trivial to mess with. Like you, Sue, I always allocate time for writing — both for enjoyment and for the learning experience it provides.