Done and dusted

I have too much to do. I needed to shop on my way home this evening, cook dinner, and bake cakes. Once the cakes are done that’s the end of that…until the next time it’s the fan’s turn to take cakes into work, and dinner needs cooking every day of the week, unless we starve: even takeways would need ordering and collecting and eating every day.

Sometimes I think that work – my job – is the problem, in which case time off work would be the answer. The house needs cleaning, but if I took a week off and scoured and polished and reorganised the entire house from top to bottom, well, the dust would start accumulating again before I’d even got to the end. There is no meaningful way in which housework is ever “done”.

I could just spend that week knitting, and that way I’d get my jumper finished and make a good start on a shawl for my cousin’s baby. I’d almost certainly also think of a dozen other things I wanted to knit with stash yarn, and that’s before I’ve even thought of buying more yarn. I could decide that when the jumper and the shawl are done I’d be finished with knitting…but where would be the fun in that?

It’s ridiculous, really, this feeling that I have lots to do, lots to get done. That somehow the only good state to be in is one of having Got Stuff Done. It’s treating life like Christmas. The way that you think I just need to clean and shop and write cards, bake a cake, get a tree and put the decorations up, and post packages and travel or feed people and make up beds, and write thank you cards and take the decorations and the tree down…and then at last it’s all over! Which is when you realise you’ve not enjoyed the run up, and the day itself has come and gone, and all you can do is start looking forward to next year and promising yourself that you’ll enjoy the doing of it, the preparations, the doing of stuff, and not just look forward to twelfth night when you’ve got it all done. It’s the doing that is as important as the having got it done.

Why do I mention this? I suppose it’s partly feeling that the endless slew of stuff to get done is a zero sum game, whereby if I go home via the supermarket, cook dinner and bake cakes there won’t be any time for piping. If I go to the allotment I won’t get any further along with the knitting. I if do the crossword I can’t write letters. I can’t decide if I need to make piping more of a “must do” item – give it a higher priority, if you like – than other things on the list, or whether I just need to go with the flow, do the pressing stuff, and then whatever I feel like doing. I worry that I don’t feel much like piping at the moment, but then sometimes I don’t feel like knitting or reading or tackling the crossword.

I’m also wondering whether I am getting bogged down in the concept of a sort of piping D-Day (maybe that should be P-Day), on which the piping will be done. I will have learned all the tunes I want to learn, be able to play them all note perfectly on demand at sessions, never miss a grace note, never lose pressure. I will, at last, be A Real Piper! But actually, that sounds rather dull, and surely the only thing to do then will be to move on to something else. I need to enjoy the getting there more, enjoy doing stuff, not getting stuff done.