The week starts on Monday, and the new year starts on September 1. These are my truths, but they’re not everyone’s truths. They’re not even my wall calendar’s truth – I like those to start on Sunday.

The Sunday-column-first is the calendar I grew up with and that kind of patterning is hard to change, especially when there’s no real need. It’s not as though they’ve suddenly gone extinct.

I tried one of the “starts on a Monday” calendars once upon a time thinking I’d like the logic of it, but it didn’t last a month. It always felt wrong, and that’s a hard thing to argue against.

Last week was a good week, but I wouldn’t call it ideal, and I won’t be using it as a template going forward. I was productive, but I skated close to the edge for too much of it.

I don’t enjoy that feeling of mental vulnerability.

I hit September with energy and enthusiasm, determined to make some changes. The timing seemed good – I’m living alone for the first time in three decades now that my son has launched – and I have plans for this and that. Above all, one must earn one’s air.

Isn’t it funny how often that sneaky lie worms its way back in?

Having plans isn’t new. I always have plans for this and that. I’m not a “whatever” kind of gal. My current plans include a garage sale set for this weekend. I can’t back out because I’ve placed an ad. Talk about buyer’s remorse. Also, the garage is full. Packing it in took days, and pricing and display took up big chunks of last week. So abandoning the venture is a non-starter, for all that my insides have started to cringe.

My current plans also include daily exercise. And daily work on my memoir including daily research. Then there’s the daily work on the garden and houseplants. And the daily bigger projects – clean the decks, cull the library, organize the linen closet. And the twice-weekly watering outside that has to be done by hand.

I forgot the floors. I always forget the floors. It’s probably because I hate doing them.

Then there are my parents. Plans. They’re older, and they’re in declining health, what with my mother’s cancer and my father’s COPD and heart issues, and so I check or there’s a phone call every day, and I visit a couple of times a week.

Aging parents take energy, both mental and physical. I find myself getting testier than I’d like more often than I like.

It’s easier to get irritated over failing memories than it is to grieve. And while there’s much to grieve, there’s not that much space for it right now. Of course, bottling things up is dangerous, so I’m trying to vent piecemeal, enough to keep things running, but not so much that I end up paralyzed and in emotional collapse.

Who invented love anyhow? I’m not sure it was the best decision.

How appropriate that I choose to get physically busy as the mental demand amp up. How typical that I choose to increase the mental challenges as well. I’m nothing if not predictable when it comes to shooting myself in the foot.

What’s with us, that we so often choose the harder and more challenging path? We don’t get props for doing so, and why would we? It’s not terribly clever. Using all your spoons before dinner is served seems like poor planning.

Then again, good planning doesn’t seem to be one of our feature traits, either, at least for the majority.

We’re more instinct than we like to admit.

I managed to surf the productivity wave to the weekend. I stayed afloat and didn’t tumble over the edge. But it felt precarious by Tuesday and that feeling kept going. Not that I changed course. Each day of the planner is full of asks and checks. But there was a cost.

I had to talk to my neighbour this week about an issue with their outside light, and that was harder than it should’ve been, repudiation of “shoulds” notwithstanding. My anxiety about it was extreme.

I did not heed the canary in the coal mine. That’s also not something we do well.

I practiced for three days before I went over, and every scenario in my head ended with a disaster. Small disasters that feature yelling, all the way up to big disasters featuring bylaw enforcement and petty vandalism.

My brain is a spectacular place sometimes. The scripts I could write with my flights of fancy would be blockbusters – illogical with a tendency towards violence.

In real life, things went fine. And why wouldn’t it? My neighbours are lovely, and all I was asking for was a change in the angle of the light so it doesn’t shine in my eyes at night.

The good result didn’t stop the after-effects. I had two panic attacks in the hours that followed over what might have been. I also stayed out for four hours. This wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t decided to run myself ragged in an effort to earn my air. Anxiety has an easier time of it when I’m stretched thin.

That “not good enough” feeling anxiety brings is a sneaky lie too many of us carry, and it worms its way into everything.

Do more. Try harder. Be better. Have it all. Do it all.

Gluttony’s about more than food and that sense of urgency regarding accomplishment is a warning I’m getting better at heeding. Still after the fact, but better.

Desperation is my, “Danger, Will Robinson.”

I’m going to figure out how to permanently eliminate feelings of insufficiency and make my fortune. In the interim, however, I’ll work on the rule my mother introduced when I was young, the one that never quite took, the reason I sometimes choke on my rice:

Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Nobody looks nice spitting it out.

From Famine to Feast’s mom via time-honoured homilies.

Perhaps I’ll also remember the perils of overscheduling. Last week was a good week, but I wouldn’t call it ideal, and I won’t be using it as a template going forward.

There is no perfect or ideal week, as it happens. Pursuing perfection gets us into all kinds of grief.

Good enough is good enough.

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