The January Jolt

Mood Tools: Include breathing space on your to-do list

The January Jolt is the moment when my painstaking plan for the new year comes up against the inconvenient truth that the December-me who set the goals has (yet) again mistaken January-me for a robot capable of operating without a single moment of breathing space.

The moment I realize my plan for the year is more laughable than workable.

The moment, if you will, when the reality of my egregiously over stuffed to-do list hits me with all the nuance of a branch shoved into a moving bicycle tire.

It’s a face plant is what it is, but January Face Plant doesn’t have the alliterative je ne sais quoi of the phrase January Jolt.

This year’s jolt came for me on the morning of January 6th—a new record for me!

After dutifully clicking through my new morning routine—a little meditation, a little yoga, and a few morning pages—I clicked the harness around my puppy, Shiloh’s chest, and we headed out for our morning constitutional.

Usually our morning walk is a moment of mindfulness because walking a puppy demands my full attention. A walk is only a walk if I reinforce commands like “leave it” when she goes to sniff poop, “drop it” when she picks up a stick, and “with me” when she—wonders of wonders—actually pads along beside me.

But on this particular morning I was up against a clock. A new client pushed and pushed (and pushed) for a Saturday meeting despite my clearly too-gentle reminder that I worked Sunday through Thursday, so we had a call scheduled for ten thirty, but I figured I could squeeze in a walk no problem, right? And maybe I could listen to an episode of a podcast I’m going to appear on later in the month?

The answer was “no” on both counts.

Miss Shiloh was so distracted I had to keep ignoring the podcast to coax her along, and then with five minutes to spare before my call—and just a few hundred feet from the condo—Shiloh found a smell that captivated her so much she somehow replaced her normal puppy mass with a Shiloh-shaped volume of lead that rooted her to the spot even though I could see the door to my condo building.

I know that Shiloh was enjoying the hairy heck out of this sniff sniff sniffy moment, with just three minutes left before my call, my blood pressure spiked.

I tried the “let’s go” command.

Sniff. Sniff. Sniff.

I tried bribing her with the stinky treats she loves.

Sniff. Sniff. Sniff.

I tried appealing to logic. “Mommy has a call in two minutes, Shiloh, so let’s go already!”

Sniff. Sniff. Sniff.

So I did the only thing I could do.

I choked up the leash and dragged her the rest of the way home¹ just in time to make that call to a client who…didn’t pick up the phone.

As I waited for my client to ring me back, I had plenty of time to think about the way I hurried my 10-month old puppy away from her happy place, and for what?

During the last two weeks of the last year, I created a wish list of all the things I could do with the shiny new year. And because in year’s past I overpromised so badly I had no choice but to underperform, I decided to break the wish list up into categories, prioritize my top goals in each category, then choose my three top goals of the year.

Surprising no one, a book goal topped my list of goals for 2024: Finish the revision.

And the rest of my goals? December-me would have sworn under oath they were all humble and healthy:

• the healthy habits I want to start or restart,

• the writing projects outside the novel I’m itching to write,

• the books I want to read.

• the people I want to spend time with, and

• the shiny new professional project I want to launch.

January-me, though, is overwhelmed just looking at that army of bullet points. She tries to put on a brave face by making daily to do lists full of steps that are humble individually but collectively sink her faster than a new year can finish its first week.

And though your metric of being sunk might be different than mine, I think we can all agree that getting irritated with a puppy for keeping you from a call you didn’t want to make isn’t exactly the shining example of the balanced year I was hoping for.

At its heart, the January Jolt is a symptom of a breathing space problem.

I understand there are people who thrive on scheduling every minute of every day. I want to be one of those people so badly, but—much like a puppy who’s caught an intoxicating scent and refuses to move—every time I pack my schedule, the marrow in my bones tunes to lead in a bid for time to linger.

Yes, I want to get all my tasks done—I love crossing things out, I do!—but I don’t want to spend my days racing from one item to the next. If I’m walking through the marsh, I want to try to spot the resident heron rather than racing on by while listening to a pod cast.

What if instead of creating a daily to-do list, I created a daily I-did list?

Instead of writing out a list of all my to-dos for a given day, I’d list just the non- negotiable tasks for the day—appointments, deadline work, etc.—and use the rest of the space to chronicle what I did? At the end of the day I’d be left with a list of what I did instead of a list of all the items I didn’t get to that day.

Will this work?

I don’t know—I really don’t.

But I do know that I want a schedule that allows me to give my puppy the two minutes she craves to sniff sniff sniff that one irresistible spot.

I do know that I want to find a sweet spot between ambition and breathing space.

And I do know that when the first real snow of the season hit this Sunday and I went out to walk the puppy fully committed to letting this Mississippi mutt experience the unbridled joy of her first encounter with snow—she bounded, fell, got up, bounded some more, and treated every snowy expanse like her personal snow cone machine—that walk was miles better than the pinched walk I’d taken the day before.

So I’m revising my priorities for the new year to put breathing space near the top.

And if need be, I’ll block out a few hours in my week where I’m not allowed to schedule anything.

Where I’ll just see where my heart and curiosity take me.

Where I’ll breathe.

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What about you? Have you experienced the January Jolt yet? How do you hold breathing space in your busy week? What’s your top priority for the year, and how do you manage all your smaller goals?

1. She has a harness, so I wasn’t dragging her by her neck, but still—not my finest hour as a pet parent.