Empty-Nesting & Multi-Tasking

People have been talking about multitasking for a long time now. I was one of them. “Oh yeah, I can talk on the phone with my friends and make quiche at the same time!” What I am beginning to hear (or not hear)  these days, though, is, “Or, maybe not.” For me, it is the slow realization that it is more about quality and presence than about quantity. I just experienced this in all of its fullness. 

After officially empty-nesting for 7-going-on-8 years (I say officially because there were short periods of non-empty-nesting along the way), this year we found ourselves hosting our entire family over a period of four months. Only this time it was not just kids, but spouses and grandkids as well! I jokingly called it the invasion. And as for multitasking…well, normal working hours were suspended, and exercise and diet fell off the cliff. It was all about how I could make the most of this time with my family.

My housecleaner came in the day after the last one left and I came home from work to a house that looked like something I vaguely remembered from a far and distant past. Every sign of the invasion had vanished. Nothing to trip over, stub my toe on, no overwhelming odors… Except, as I sat at my dining table looking out the balcony door at the beautiful sunset, I noticed the fingerprints all over the glass about 18 inches above the floor level. I am not in a rush to remove them. They are the memory that multitasking is not so important and that not multitasking is sometimes more important than normal things.

What multitasking can you avoid today?

Be aware that my sarcasm is only directed at truths about myself and is not a reflection on anyone else.