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I’m ready for the next two weeks to be over – maybe even the whole month of December. Who’s with me?

I used to really love this time of year, but the last few years it’s really turned into a huge source of stress for me.

At Go Triad, December is one of our busiest times of the year. Deadlines get pushed up, creating a constant flow of editing, planning, organizing and assigning, which means longer hours and computer eye-strain.

Outside of work it’s really no different. There are the daily deadlines of life that come in the form of insanely long and overly ambitious to-do lists, Christmas shopping lists that have barely made a dent and R.S.V.P.’s to holiday parties that you keep forgetting to respond to.

And then there’s my house, which looks like a hurricane has blown through it. There are towers of dirty dishes in the sink that by the time I get to them I may need a hazmat suit. And there is mail from the past few weeks that have collected in piles throughout my home – on the kitchen table, the dining room table, the desk, the coffee table.
It all comes down to this: there are not enough hours in the day. And maybe it’s just me, but the past few weeks it feels like I’ve been moving at warp speed. Time is passing so quickly that it’s hard to remain in the present. In my mind, I’m already in 2012.

On my lunch breaks, I run home, pay bills, try to clean up some of my messy dishes, sort through the weeks of unopened mail. This never makes for a relaxing lunch nor do I ever make the progress that I hope to.

So today when I went home, I decided to revise my to-do list and only attack two items: eat lunch and walk Yoshi.
 

It’s not often I walk Yoshi on my lunch break. I typically just put him outside briefly to do his business, but today it was just too gorgeous to not be outside. I decided we both deserved a treat.

As we walked the sidewalks of my neighborhood, the sun on our faces, I felt my stress begin to slip away. My to-do list didn’t matter anymore. What did matter was being in the present. I looked down at Yoshi, who was smiling, happily trotting along, and so content. He was completely in the moment enjoying life, the sunshine, the quiet. He wasn’t stressing about his to-do list, deadlines or his Christmas shopping. Granted, he’s a dog and has no concept of what a to-do list even is, but this afternoon he reminded me that sometimes all it takes is something as simple as a 15-minute walk to quiet the mind and ground you in the present. And that I need to make time for myself. It’s easy to lose sight of that.

So the next time I’m writing out that to-do list, somewhere between “go to the grocery store” and “pick up dry cleaning,” I won’t forget to write in “go for a walk with Yoshi."