Feeling Overwhelmed by Everything? Here's What I Do.

Do you ever wake up with big plans for the day, completely convinced that this is the day you finally get it together? I do. And more often than not, I end up feeling overwhelmed by everything before I've even finished my coffee.

I lie there in the morning running through everything I'm going to accomplish. I'll knock out the list. Order the things I've been meaning to order for weeks. Finish the project that's been hanging over my head. Return the calls. Make real progress. Maybe even sort my whole life out while I'm at it.

Then the day happens.

And by the time I crawl into bed, half of what I was so sure about that morning is sitting exactly where I left it.

Tomorrow, I tell myself.

Then tomorrow comes, and somehow it's the same thing all over again. Different day, same pile.

Lately, one of those things has been water filters.

Ever since we moved into our temporary home, my skin has been painfully dry and my hair has gone brittle. The water here is just different, and I've wanted to put filters on the showers since the day we arrived. I thought about ordering them right away. Then we left for a while. Then we came back.

Still no filters.

And before anyone says, "Just order the filters already"—I know. Believe me, I know.

That's part of why it drives me crazy. This isn't some massive undertaking. I'm not digging a well in the backyard. I need to look up a couple of filters, pick the ones I want, and press a button.

But I'm tired, okay?

Some days, the basics are genuinely all I've got.

The other thing I keep putting off is buying my daughter more Legos. Right now she's making do with a small container she's sort of borrowing, but her real collection is boxed up somewhere in storage. I keep thinking I should get her a set of her own for this temporary place. Not because she needs more toys, but because I want her to have something here that's hers. Something she can dump on the floor, build, wreck, and enjoy while this is home.

It should be easy.

Yet there it sits, right next to the water filters on my imaginary list of Things I Am Definitely Doing Tomorrow.

Why Feeling Overwhelmed by Everything Makes Even Easy Things Feel Hard

Of course, none of this is really about water filters or Legos.

We're in the middle of overhauling basically every Karma Penguin product right now. Digital products, merchandise, all of it. And at the same time, I have five other businesses that apparently held a meeting and decided this would be a fantastic week to need me too.

People are calling with questions. Decisions have to be made. Things need answers. I've caught myself saying "I'll get back to you" more times than I care to admit.

And sometimes I haven't.

So to the people I'm supposed to get back to: I'm sorry. I will. I haven't forgotten about you—quite the opposite. You're probably one of the seventeen tabs currently open in my brain, and I'm still trying to figure out which one is playing music.

The best way I can describe how I feel right now is this. Have you ever decided to organize your closet and, in a moment of wildly unreasonable optimism, pulled everything out at once?

Every shirt. Every shoe. Every bag. Every random accessory you forgot you owned.

At first it feels productive. Look at you. You're finally doing it.

Then you look at the bed.

Then the floor.

Then back at the bed.

And suddenly you have no idea where anything goes, you regret every decision that led you here, and lying face-down on the pile and crying starts to feel like a perfectly reasonable organizational strategy.

That's how I feel.

Except the closet is my life.

The trouble with getting overwhelmed by the whole closet is that eventually you stop seeing individual shirts. You just see a giant, impossible pile.

That's what I've been doing. Looking at everything that needs me all at once. The businesses. The products. The phone calls. The house. The water. The Legos. The thousand small responsibilities that aren't hard on their own but get unbearably heavy when you try to carry them all at the same time.

And I keep telling myself tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I'll have more energy. Tomorrow I'll catch up. Tomorrow I'll finally get the kind of day where everything clicks into place.

It's a bit like deciding your diet starts Monday. Monday comes, you're doing great, and then you have a burrito. Or a cookie. And suddenly the whole day feels ruined, so you might as well start over tomorrow.

Except the cookie didn't ruin anything.

You just ate a cookie.

You don't have to wait until tomorrow to make the next choice.

I think that's the part I've been missing.

You Don't Have to Finish the Whole Closet

When everything piles up, my instinct is to believe I need one enormous burst of productivity to fix it. A whole uninterrupted day. I need to wake up energized, focused, organized, and ready to cross twenty things off the list.

The problem is, I'm tired.

And waiting to become significantly less tired before I do anything is not turning out to be a winning strategy.

So maybe I don't need to organize the whole closet.

Maybe I just need to put away one shirt.

Answer one person who's waiting on me. Order the water filters. Buy my daughter the Legos. Finish one Karma Penguin product instead of drowning in the thought of all of them.

Then, if I have anything left, pick up another shirt.

That's it.

Because I've spent enough nights going to bed frustrated with myself, promising tomorrow will be different. I don't want another grand plan for tomorrow. I want one small thing I can actually finish today.

Maybe you've got your own water filter sitting on your mental list right now. Something that isn't even hard, but somehow keeps getting carried from one day to the next because it's buried under everything else.

Don't tear the whole closet apart trying to fix it.

Pick one thing.

Do that one thing today.

And if today also happens to include a burrito, or a cookie, or a nap, or absolutely nothing productive afterward—fine. The day isn't ruined.

You still put away a shirt.

Tomorrow, you can put away another.

Eventually, that's how the closet gets organized.

And right now, that's good enough for me.

Waddle on, dear reader. Waddle on. ❤️

About the Author | Day 220

I'm a soul-led coach, writer, entrepreneur, mother, and recovering perfectionist. Right now I'm navigating motherhood, a temporary home, family responsibilities, healing, faith, exhaustion, big dreams, and several businesses that have all developed an urgent need for me at exactly the same moment.

For 220 straight days, I've shown up here and written about life while I'm actually living it—not from the far side of having it all figured out. That's meant writing through exhaustion, transitions, toddler chaos, business lessons, emotional growth, uncomfortable realizations, ordinary moments, and plenty of days when what I wanted to do was far bigger than the energy I had to do it.

Today was one of those days.

I write for the overthinkers, the exhausted caregivers, the people quietly building something they love, the spiritually curious, the recovering perfectionists, and anyone else who occasionally has seventeen tabs open in their brain and can't work out which one is making the noise. I don't think growth always arrives as some huge breakthrough. Sometimes it shows up when we're just frustrated enough with our own patterns to finally try something different.

Day 220 is about one of mine.

I've been waiting for tomorrow to be the day I catch up, get organized, return every call, finish every project, order the things, and somehow put my entire metaphorical closet back together.

I'm starting to think that's exactly what's keeping me stuck.

I don't need to fix the whole thing today. I need to stop staring at the pile long enough to pick something up.

One call. One task. One decision. One water filter.

One shirt.

Then we'll see what tomorrow brings.