I came across this poster while on a work trip to Martinez. It’s a cute little town near the water home to antique stores, restaurants, and, oddly enough, bail bonds. Lots of them. Martinez is also home to the county courthouse and jail. 

The message on the poster—”You’ve got enough on your plate”—resonates more now than it did a month ago when I took its picture. I was finishing my training at Starbucks then and filing paperwork for my second job. Things felt easy, and they were because it was just the beginning.

Pretty soon, when Starbucks training ended and the second job at the county started, I was working 10 hours a day to try and meet a deadline that the county had. I was exhausted. I am slowly recovering from that intense stressful time, but now I feel that I may indeed have a little too much on my plate:

• I have two new jobs for which I have steep learning curves.
• I live in a new city and am still adapting to the change.
• I am trying to figure out how to balance work and my creative projects. Everything creative has been put on hold, and it takes a toll on me since I need to have a creative outlet.

It feels as though I’m in a period of waiting it out—waiting to see how the dust of these two jobs settles, waiting to see what rhythm work will take so I can figure out what I’m going to do about my personal projects.

This wait makes me feel unmotivated and uninspired to work on my projects in the first place. Although I’ve metaphorically put them on the shelf, I still glance up at them and say, “I haven’t forgotten you. I have my eye on you.”

I look back at the picture of the poster and see how, sooner or later, this message would be true.