Tuesday, May 29, 2012

I am an Adrenaline Junkie



 Hi.  My name is Erin, and I am adrenaline junkie.

Not in a cool zips lining kind of way.  Or extreme sports kind of way. 

More like the boring mother-of-two-kids kind of way.  It seems like the more I do, the more I am compelled to do.  I overdo it.

I come from a long line of overdoers.  My grandmother on my dad’s side was an overdoer.  My dad is definitely an overdoer.  Stories about him are legend in our family.  When I was about seven years old, we had out-of-town guests coming to stay with us.  He was in a mad flurry to get stuff done.  Not like normal stuff, like cleaning or grocery shopping or even planning fun stuff to do. 

Like remodeling the home kind of stuff.  Most of the details remain fuzzy (probably because I have blocked them out of my memory), but I remember that he was painting the inside of the house the day before company arrived.  As soon as our guest came inside, she paused, inhaled deeply, and asked, “Do I smell fresh paint?”

So now that you know I was doomed from the beginning where I am coming from, I can tell you my trigger for over-doing it starts with a mega to do list.  Then, my mind starts working in crazy ways to work out the different time management configurations to complete as much as I can.  I start to feel like the adrenaline start flowing through my blood stream, and I start to feel all lit up inside.

I find myself clicking along, and then I come up with a crazy brilliant idea to add more tasks because when I workoutshowerfinishthreeloadsoflaundrywriteablogpost all before 7:30 a.m., I. feel. AMAZING.  So logically, I need to add more tasks instead of enjoying the fact that I completed tasks.

This ends one of two ways (but funny enough, always with a stomach ache)
1. I stay up until midnight still riding the adrenaline high.
Or
2. I pass out at 11p.m. from sheer exhaustion and wake up with a start at 4:45 a.m. to chase the dragon again.

It’s a sickness.

I know I should meditate.

As the wise Olivia always says, “There’s still so much to do.”

But that’s the adrenaline talking.

Are you an adrenaline junkie?  I can’t be the only one like this, right?

3 comments:

Terri said...

Yay! There are more like me. Rest assure, you are not alone. I too get a rush from my list and crossing things off is like gaining points. Too bad there is no place to cash those points in.

Erin Janda Rawlings said...

I think there needs to be place to cash in those points because we'd be gagillionaires!

Thanks for the comment!

Anonymous said...

i have always been a junkie since childhood....but the rush got worse after having kids. at times i feel like bungie jumping or abseiling a structure! i am attempting starting parkour as that has so far appealed to me and is a lot of fun.