Deadlines

Deadlines... always deadlines!! Have you ever noticed the word itself... dead-lines... Hmmm, does that mean that if you don't cross the line in time, you're dead??? Sometimes it can seem that way! Why not call it live-lines... Hmmm, if you look it up on wiktionary, there are some archaic uses that make a bit more sense. The idea that it was a line around a prison... cross the line and you're dead! Or that it was a line which doesn't move... i.e. It is not a live-line... because in that case it would move!! So it is a dead-line...

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of live-lines!! Deadlines that move as things change... I plan to have them done by a certain date, but then there is a certain flexibility in them that creeps in... or they just migrate to the bottom of the importance pile... But at some point, they all become deadlines!! If they aren't completed by a certain date, at some point, then the project is a dead duck... or I am in a bit of trouble... or it becomes a moot point. Everything seems to have an expiry date... Whether it is a project or a task or a chore. There comes a point, where, if it hasn't been completed... then there really isn't any point in doing it any more!

Sometimes my own expiry date of energy and enthusiasm comes first! And the thing gets put on the indefinite pile of "maybe someday"... It seems I am always in the midst of juggling various things, and some things just get taken out of the mix at some point, and laid to rest on the sideboard of life... Maybe someday... maybe I'll have time for that... or energy... or a spate of inspiration. Some of those things just vanish off the horizon of life.... others sit there and call to me... And I know that at some point, I will need to bring them back into the mix, get them back in the air and see what I can do with them...

And maybe that's a good thing.... Maybe it's good to see if a project has a life of its own, calls to me to complete it... or just quietly vanishes off the horizon. In that case, it probably wasn't all that important. But the project that sits on the sideboard and won't go away, the one that jumps up and down every once in a while and taps me on a shoulder... Those are the ones I need to heed.... the ones that I need to complete... and perhaps sooner rather than later...