When it comes to Key’s, I have a Problem.

Today, just like every other day, I woke up feeling over-whelmed.  I’ve got nothing to do, but at the same time, I have the weight of everything I could be doing descansar’ing on my shoulders. I should be integrating; I should be practicing my Portuguese; I should be learning Macua; I should be outside playing with Criancas; I should be working in my Machamba (I’ve been planting corn and grass!); I should be helping out at school; I should be lesson planning; I should finish unpacking; I should be building the shelves for my closet; I should find some wood so that I can actually build those shelves; I should plan my meals; I should go explore the mountains behind my school; I should call my parents.  I shouldn’t just sit here and think about all that’s looming.

It’s hard not too though.  Back in the US, I had this same problem.  I’d constantly come up with ideas of things I wanted or needed to do, and eventually that list would become so big that the psychological pressure of everything that needed to get done would cause my knees to physically buckle.  Kind of ironic that sometimes  I really suck at managing my own stress.

I’ve come to realize that shitty-stress management is not a by-product of my environment.  It was, and still is, a significant character flaw. So yesterday, I started to think about ways to improve and came up with the idea to make a change and work on organizing my life a bit better.  They say routines are dangerous, but who is “they” anyway.  The safety they provide is a really attractive feature right now, and I could use a little mindlessness in my life right now.  It’s been so long since I’ve had any sort of routine that I’ve since forgotten what it feels like.  I think I miss it.  I’ll find out so enough, because yesterday, I commenced Operation Organization. 

The day began with a schedule.  This is phase one.  My thought process is, perhaps I can start to identify the tasks I need to perform everyday (cooking breakfast, washing dishes, sweeping all the dust out of my house, checking for snakes in my bathroom, etc.) by making schedules and writing them down.  Eventually, I can use that to form a more complete picture of how I can manage my time. 

I began with my To-Do List.  It’s long, so I had problem filling in time slots.  Minute by minute and Hour by hour (sometimes devoting a little more than an hour), I began to block out my day. 7:30 to 8:30 – Eat breakfast and write a schedule; 8:30 to 8:45 – Wash dishes and sweep out kitchen; 8:45 to 9:45 - Plan out my meals for the week; 9:45 to 10:45 –  Work in the Machamba; 10:45 to 13:00 – Go to the market; 13:00 to 14:00 – Cook and eat Lunch; 14:00 to 15:00 – Write a blog post about Pemba; 15:00 to 16:00 – Continue moving in, put up coat rack, hang curtains, organize clothing; 16:00 to 17:00 – Study Portuguese.  There were a few more things thrown in, but I’m sure you get the picture.

When I finished up writing, it took a little more than 5 minutes before I had to make my first modification.  At 8:35, Allen, the missionary from down the street (by Mozambican standards) called to tell me he had found someone who would be willing to tutor me in Portuguese and Macua.  He was anxious to come meet me and would stop by my house in the afternoon.  Because I was now expecting someone, I decided push-up my departure for the market to ensure I’d be home just in case life was planning on throwing me any more curveballs.  And then it did.  An hour and a half later, the entire schedule fell apart when I locked myself out of my house.  Wow, it took less than half a day to discover how difficult keeping to a schedule in this country is going to be.

Locking myself out is a story in itself, but I’ll spare you my overly-dramatic, and long-winded interpretation of what happened and instead say that my own laziness is at fault for this one.  I changed the lock on my backdoor, but was too lazy to remove one of the keys from the ring and put it on my keychain.  “Oh, I’ll do it later,” I thought.  Well, I didn’t do it later.  Right before I left for the market and when I was in the process of locking my front door, I thought about how silly it was that I was now carrying around a key that didn’t work on any of my locks.  So, I decided to remove it.  I tested which one worked, and which didn’t, and thought I removed the bad one.  As fate would have it, I was wrong.  When it comes to dealing with keys, I seem to have some serious problems (if you’re keeping count, this one makes it three key incidents in four months).

Frustrated and unable to break-in on account of my new security bars (this epitomizes the term bittersweet), I decided to go to the market anyway and just deal with it later. When I got back a few hours later, I was able to get back in with the help of my school director and a carpenter he knows.  When I went to Pamba a few days ago, I anticipated the possibility of losing my keys, so I wanted to leave a spare set accessible in case of dire circumstances.  I tied a set to a long piece of string and hung them off the back of the security bars in one of my windows.  You could see the loop of string, but not the keys because they were hanging far below.  My plan was, if there turned out to be a problem while I was gone and I lost my keys, I could just crack the glass and pulls the string to get back in my house.  Luckily, I never removed them when I got back, so they were still there waiting to be used.  The carpenter and I managed to remove the window and I was able to fish the keys up and out bringing the whole debacle to an end. 

By the time I finally got back inside, I was exhausted, thirsty, and tired, and had no motivation to try and re-work my schedule.  I still want to try and do it, but it’s starting to look like it’s going to take a bit more work than I thought.  Ugh.