The October edition of Camp Wildling is happening in two weeks. I started panicking last week about being unprepared, but shoved the panic aside for my trip to OKC. I knew that I had a lot of things planned for the month of September and I knew that some activities were going to bleed over into October. I went into September with my mind set on focusing on one event at a time before worrying/planning for the next thing on the list. This week, I ordered a bunch of things from Amazon to put into camp mailbags and then patted myself on the back because now I feel mostly prepared for camp.

Years ago when I was in Yoga Teacher training, my teacher, Karen, told us that we cannot multitask. This sounds like baloney because if you are like me, you currently have five things open on your desktop and are under the impression that you are doing things in all of those windows. This is an illusion or a lie we tell ourselves so that we feel like we are being productive and getting things done. We are also under the impression that if we do not look like we are doing a million things at one time, then we’re not being productive. The reality is that we are rarely getting things done. Taking away the idea that we are capable of multitasking is a bit of a blow to our egos. We have been conditioned to believe that the ability to do a number of tasks all at the same time is what successful people do to be successful. I fall victim to it all the time. I think I am being productive by working on multiple tasks at once, but then I feel bad when most of those tasks are left unfinished at the end of a day. I feel this the hardest when I am trying to make some healthy life changes.

Focusing on one event at a time for the month of September was easy. There were weekdays between events which gave me time to gather my thoughts and energy for the next event. I also set boundaries. I told myself not to focus on the events yet to come so that I could fully enjoy the now of the current event. What if I organized my day-to-day life with these kinds of boundaries, refusing to move on to the next task until I had completed the current task? That may not be realistic, but I can organize my day in a way that commits chunks of time to one task and one task only. I only need to set a timer and say to myself “Cindy, for the next hour you are only doing this.” Then, I need to adhere to this plan. No screwing around on Facebook or perusing news stories or random online window shopping. This is my goal for October: set boundaries that allow me to focus on one task at a time.

I’m grateful for the mindful intentions I set for September and I am working towards more moments of mindfulness in October even though October doesn’t seem as packed as September was with all of the things. In theory, that should make this month’s goal an easy one. Except I know that it will actually be more of a challenge because it is one thing to apply this once a week, but quite another to apply it to the day to day. I feel up to this challenge though, in an unexpected way. And that is something to be grateful for.