Multitasking Mania

I've always been fairly adept at multitasking—from engaging in dual activities like cooking while talking on the phone to juggling the larger overlapping and continuous responsibilities of life (career, home & family, and personal commitments).  As one with a short attention span, I’ve found stimulation in these varied involvements. That is, until recently.

Naturally curious, I went online to dictionary.com to see what it had to say about multitasking.  There I found an expanded "computing dictionary" definition, as it was the computer industry that first coined the term.  (It's not surprising that we Americans borrowed it to describe human behavior since we often expect overly productive, machine-like output from ourselves and others).

Among other things, it said:  "A multitasking operating system should provide some degree of protection of one task from another to prevent tasks from interacting in unexpected ways such as accidentally modifying the contents of each other's memory areas."  Lately my “memory areas” have been “accidentally modified” as my multitasking has bordered on the ridiculous.

In an earlier post I wrote about returning to teaching after a six year break (and a 15-month hiatus from the work world).  When I last taught, I was younger (read:  more energetic), single and I wasn't also working as a freelance writer/columnist as I am now.  

Most weeks I'm barely a step ahead of my students as I prep for two different courses; I'm not turning out as many articles or columns as I'd hoped; and my blog has been merely a nagging afterthought. Why?  My health has sent me signals to slow down.

In the month since I returned to work, I've undergone a sleep study and discovered I have a mild case of sleep apnea; seen a sports medicine doctor for chronic neck and shoulder pain who ordered first x-rays and then an MRI to  diagnose two bulging discs in my neck; started on a course of physical therapy several times a week to remedy the problem; and made numerous trips between the eye doctor and the optical place trying to get my middle aged eyes into prescription glasses that work at near, mid and far distances (I know it's asking a lot, but...).  Then there are the daily commitments to husband and home, extended family and friends, and the organizations to which I belong.

Not long ago a friend asked me, "Do you think you're doing too much?" Although her delivery was polite, the implication was "DUH!" In my usual, I-Can-Handle-It manner I said, "No.  I don't think so” (‘I don't think’ being the operative phrase). Because the aforementioned health issues have been impairing my life, I needed to take action.

Still, my friend's question struck a chord that resonated with me.  I realized that I've been trying to heal myself all at once while keeping up an unreasonable pace of productivity with the other areas of my life, and it's been exhausting.  

At my next physical therapy appointment, I heard myself say to the therapist:  "I'm feeling overwhelmed.  I think I need to cut back to twice a week."  Since then, I've been re-evaluating my current obligations, health and otherwise, and focusing on the proverbial "First Things First," trusting that what needs to get done will get done.

It hasn't taken long for me to see that my bouncing from project to project, appointment to appointment, task to task--much like a pinball in a machine—has finally caught up to me and has me now metaphorically lying prone and calling out (if only to myself) "I've fallen and I can't get up."

Obviously, multitasking has value and purpose when not lived as a way of life.  We all must at least occasionally juggle our obligations and divide our attention, but the question is clear:  what is it that is really worth juggling?  I’m in the process of evaluating just that as I modify some of my commitments and let others go.

To borrow another computing term, maybe I'll try the batch system for awhile: finish one task before beginning the next one.

The Bearable Lightness of Being

This morning my mother called to check on my husband who hasn't been feeling well. Recovering from a sinus infection herself, her voice was still weak and a little broken. When I mentioned it, she said "Yeah, I need to get back to my voice exercises. I'm supposed to be doing them for the rest of my life and I haven't done them in two years."

I chuckled at the irony of her remark and soon we were both laughing, a moment's reprieve from our more serious concerns. And an uplifting reminder that in spite of coping with increasing medical challenges, my mother has a way of making lemonade out of the sourest of lemons.

Last week I took her to the outpatient surgery center for a caudal epidural of steroid, the hoped for remedy to a painful spinal stenosis that undoubtedly worsened this summer after 6 weeks in a cast for a broken foot. Just prior to treatment for the stenosis, I and other family members rotated shifts to take her to a local hospital for a two week regimen of daily IV antibiotic infusions, her only treatment option for a serious infection. Before that she had a partial procedure to improve blood flow to her legs and feet and at the beginning of the year, she tripped and fell on a city sidewalk severely bruising her hand and upper lip where a feint scar remains as a reminder.

Yet, through all of these trials she has maintained her sense of humor, the most recent example evident when she completed paperwork in the over-crowded waiting room of the surgery center. She turned to me when tasked with answering the all-too familiar questions about reproductive health on the medical questionnaire and said, "Sometimes I just want to write 'are you serious?'"

Trying to lighten her mood, I egged her on with "Well, why don't you?" We exchanged a glance and with a wry smile she filled that in as her response to "When was your last menstrual cycle?" When it came to answering "Are you pregnant?" she wrote, "I sure hope not." Admittedly, I suggested that last answer.

We both had a good laugh, a release of tension at the uncertainty of things to come and at least a momentary belief that the only answer that really matters sometimes is that laughter can be the best medicine.