It doesn’t happen often – my overwhelmedness. At least I don’t think it happens often. And I should know. After all, I’m the one in my skin feeling overwhelmed. I’m sure there are many, many people who could claim that oh really? you don’t think you get overwhelmed often? because I have 157 emails right here in my archives with OVERWHELMED! as the subject line … and they are all from you. from February.
Ahh February. That was a good month.
So I should clarify ... THAT kind of overwhelmed … the run-of-the-mill overwhelmed, is not the same kind of overwhelmed that I’m currently feeling. AND it’s not really fair to call the run-of-the-mill overwhelmed the same thing as over-the-top overwhelmed. I mean yes, they are both from the root word “overwhelm” but they mean two totally different things and can have two totally different meanings – one benign, one somewhat scary. Like the word prick. Or jock. Or democrat … you see what I’m saying there.
I should, I suppose, answer the typical questions that come up from the well-meaning folk around me when I feel this way. The folks who, to their credit, do their best to “fix it” without having to listen one more minute to me talking about how overwhelmed I am. The answers are …
1) No, I’m not on my period
2) Yes, I’ve eaten today
3) No, it wasn’t exclusively brownie batter
So the usual suspects have been rounded up and acquitted. And yet. I’m overwhelmed. Still.
When I feel like this the very idea of trying to figure out why I feel like this is enough to send me over the edge. Any right minded person in my life looks at me and says, “What’s making you feel so overwhelmed?” and I usually will rattle off a few examples. But this whole process is just exhausting and while I’m explaining why I’m overwhelmed, I’m sitting there going Oh holy hell! No wonder I’m so overwhelmed … this is all so … overwhelming!!
It’s like I’m trying to untangling my bra from being wrapped up and over and around the agitator in the middle of the washing machine. It’s impossible to know how it got this tangled and doubly impossible to see how it will ever come loose. I’m left more confused than when I started trying to unconfused things.
Once, a number of years ago, my sister and I were doing the books for a company we both worked with. My sister has only taken one accounting class of any type in her whole long-columned life and therefore she was only the supervisor of this project whereas I was the actual bookkeeper. The problem here is that I never took any accounting courses. Ever. And also, I stopped balancing my checkbook in 1991. But didn’t realize until 1993. Add to this lovely mix the company was ever so complicated with multiple divisions buying and selling to each other and these transactions never taking place in the real world but just on paper and then throw in a boss who was as organized as a catfight and a system that was one day ahead of the abacus….but just one day – a short, winter, Icelandic only 2 hours of daylight day – at that. Put all that together and then release spitting llamas into the office where we worked and you’ll start to get a picture of what it was like to do this job.
At some point in all this mess my sister and I were sitting facing each other across a fabricated desktop and I was desperately trying to explain to her why the books weren’t coming out exactly right. We’d had the same problem (in the same amount) the month before and thought we’d fixed it. We also had the same problem (in the same amount) the month before that and thought we’d fixed it then too. But here it was again and after sitting with it for a while, consulting an accounting for dummies book, doing some yoga and contacting my warrior accounting spirit in a sweat lodge, I’d had an epiphany. So very carefully and very deliberately, I sat and explained to my sister what was wrong and how we got there.
“You see,” I said, “It’s like this …Let’s say you sold me 2 paperclips,” I pulled two paperclips from the fabricated desk drawer and handed them to her … I waited … “Sell them to me!” I said and she said, “OH!” and then handed me the two paperclips. I wrote this transaction down onto a yellow sticky note. “Okay, now, it turns out that I don’t need two of them, right?” and I wait for her to respond. “Uh huh” she says. But not convincingly, so I say “Stay with me!” and I write our next transaction on the same sticky note “I don’t need two so I send one back” I hand her one paper clip back. “Right.” she says. “Then,” I say, “you buy 3 bic pens from me and pay me in part with the refund from the paperclips!” I write all of this in actual numbers on the sticky note. “But!” I call out, “But! The bic pens aren’t good, SO!!!....” and she chimes in , “Yes! So! The paperclips don’t matter at all! And the Bics are what we are talking about! I got it!!!” she cries. “Good explanation!” she adds and begins to work out the actual sales in the books. But I haven’t moved. I’m just staring at her. And she looks at me and says, “What?” and I furrow my brow and say …
“I don’t get it.”
I thought of that story today when I was trying to explain all of this to The Hub who, mercifully, did NOT try to fix anything. He did, however, let me know that this whole paperclip story is very confusing. And I’m all like, “You think it is confusing to hear it? You should be inside my head trying to tell it!” And at the risk of being put on everyone's high-alert list, I'm still telling it. Because even if it is confusing, I do think there is a good point in there somewhere.
I’ll let you know if I figure out what it is.
What... about... animation?!
Posted by: The Hub | March 18, 2008 at 10:38 AM
So is the paper clip story kinda like this:
http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/
;)
Posted by: Jeff Risley | March 19, 2008 at 08:38 PM