Shove over

Sometimes I get so busy I feel like I am running a booking hotline. When are you available? Three weeks time? One month? This Friday? Oh, I can't do drinks, I have a dinner. You can bring the kids. How about 7.00pm? But, we'll have to have breakfast because I'm out for lunch and then we have a wedding.

My diary has become an intricate interplay of different colored Lego blocks all linked and overlapping.

I'll paint you a picture. Let's take today for instance. I have back to back appointments of the health and wellbeing variety in order to set myself on the right path to remain sane and physically in tact for the coming onslaught of another brutal work week. This past weekend, Saturday was swallowed by housework and errands that had accumulated beyond the brink of the United Nations standard for third world livability. I spent about two hours on the phone returning calls and then attended an engagement party. Sunday was the first day I had seen my husband in maybe a fortnight. We had breakfast, went to look at property (an urban necessity for those of us looking to enter the ball breaking Melbourne market anytime this millennium) and picked up a gift for our nephew whose birth is pending any day now (I wonder, can we make time for that?).

Don't get me wrong, it's lovely that we have lots of family, friends and colleagues who want to see us. If I was in primary school, this kind of popularity would be almost legendary. The reality is, that we have one day a week where our schedules cross over just enough to remind ourselves that we're married. "Hello", we say. So...you're that bugger who left the towel on the bathroom floor last Thursday? I remember you.

If your life is a hotel, you are forever manning to desk. People come to you and tell you what they need. They need rest. They need a meeting. They need you to listen. They need a drink. Stay as long as you like, you tell them, and they fall at your feet. Some people overstay their welcome. Others refuse to stay and just drop by to use your amenities.

One day you discover you have let too many rooms. The sauna and the restaurant are booked solid and even the pool is overcrowded. There is no room left for you. No one wants to check out because they are far too comfortable. You have been overly accommodating. There is no space, nowhere for you to rest or withdraw to.

A book I am reading about recovering your artist says that creative people make nice to sabotage themselves; "yes, take me, I don't need for much". You appear good to others but are not being authentic or true to yourself. The author calls this the virtue trap. When others won't leave us alone, we abandon ourselves, deferring our needs to meet theirs.

I pondered this and in the days after I read it, I walked past a nightclub sign that said if you love something give it ROOM to grow. It was literally, a sign.

So, shove over people, I need some room. I am clearing my diary but I will be very busy. I have an appointment with myself.

Today, I rock up at my own hotel, bags in hand. Room, please! I ask, but it is more like begging. Just for one. No, I don't care what it costs.

And hold my calls.