We Keep Putting More Logs on the Fire
We Keep Putting More Logs on the Fire
I do this with actual fires, which is how I finally understood that I do it with everything else.
You build a fire in the pit out back. Couple of small logs. It catches, it settles, and it gets to that place where everybody in the circle can feel it on their face and nobody has to move their chair. Gentle glow. Conversation going. That is the whole point of a fire and you have arrived at it.
So I think: this is good. Let's put another log on.
And then, since that worked, a few more. And then the real thought, the one underneath all of it, which is that if I load it up properly now I can stop thinking about it and it will just last.
Twenty minutes later it is a scorcher. Everybody has pushed their chair back. You cannot sit near it, you cannot talk over it, and the thing you built because you wanted people close has driven them to the edge of the yard.
Nobody wrecks a fire by being careless. You wreck it by loving it.
What Friday looked like
Here is our calendar as of this morning. Every item on it is something we chose.
Jana has a dentist appointment at eight. I have a speaking engagement at seven thirty. Company arrives at ten, and there is still cleaning to do, and I am not certain we have food. Once everyone is here we are skiing, which means the course needs to be set, the boat needs gas, and the life jackets need to be findable. Jana asked me about the life jackets on the recording and my honest answer was that it was a question I needed to look into.
Saturday we are both speaking at a Toastmasters event up in Lady Lake at seven thirty in the morning. Then home to let the dog out, then collect our houseguests and drive to Travers for a fundraiser, where we set up tents and Jana skis on a new ski she has not used, in a costume, which she learned about this week. There is a party afterward, so there is a cooler to pack. Wet clothes, dry clothes, towels, sunscreen.
And at some point we may be driving to Atlanta. Or Talladega. We have not fully resolved that.
Jana laid all of that out on the podcast and I said, out loud, "you're getting me anxious."
This is the fourth weekend in a row.
The part that keeps us doing it
Most advice about overcommitment treats a packed calendar as a failure of planning, as though we are bad at saying no.
We are excellent at saying no. We say no constantly.
The problem is that we survive these weekends. We get to Sunday night, wrung out, and we feel tremendous. Competent. Like people who can carry a lot. And that feeling is so good that we go looking for it again, which is how a casual ski weekend with friends turns into two speeches, a fundraiser, houseguests and a possible drive to Alabama.
It is the same move as the fire. The thing was already working. We poured on because it was working.
And the motive underneath it is not ambition. It is that I would like to stop deciding. A half-empty week requires me to keep choosing what matters, over and over, and that is genuinely harder than being busy. Fill it completely and the choosing is done. The week just happens to you, and you get to feel like a person who is doing a lot.
A fully loaded calendar is a way to avoid tending your own life.
Living Lucky® Practice
The Fire Check
A fire is right when everyone can sit close. Then somebody adds more.
This is for the week in front of you. Not your whole life. Just this week.
01 Everything on the fire.
List this week. All of it, including the things that do not feel like commitments because you said yes months ago.
02 Where was it already good?
Draw a line through your list at the point where the week was already worth having. Write what was on it up to there.
03 What got poured on after that?
Everything past the line. These are almost certainly good things. That is why they are there.
04 What was I avoiding by filling it?
A full week removes the work of choosing. Open time asks you to decide what matters. Which were you ducking?
05 Who is driving, and do they know?
For each big thing this week, name who is leading it. Then name the part you have been carrying in your head and never said out loud.
06 One log coming off.
Name it, and name who you have to tell. A log you only remove in your head is still on the fire.
What speed does to a marriage
Everything above is the part I understood. Here is the part Jana had to explain to me.
When the pace picks up, I go quiet. Not sulking. Thinking. I am running the whole weekend in my head, the drive times, the gear, what happens if the boat is low on fuel, and I am doing it silently because that is where I process.
From where she sits, it looks like nothing is happening.
She said on the recording that she has been feeling like she is on a lonely island, asking in about nine different ways for a conversation, while I sit six feet away with the entire schedule running behind my face. Her actual question: are you thinking about anything over there?
I was thinking about all of it. I just never said any of it out loud.
That gap is where the arguments come from, and it is worth noticing that the arguments are never about the thing. They are about whether the other person is in it with you. When you are moving fast, silence stops reading as calm and starts reading as absence.
The fix is not complicated and I am still bad at it. Say the schedule out loud. Narrate what you are tracking, even the parts that are not resolved, even the parts where the answer is that you need to look into the life jackets. The information matters less than the evidence that somebody else is carrying it with you.
Driver and passenger
The thing we actually do well is hand off.
Sometimes Jana is driving our life and I am along for it. Sometimes it is the other way. We have gotten good enough at the switch that it mostly happens without a conversation.
With one wrinkle. When I am driving, she does not want to just ride. She wants a hand on the wheel. Tell me where we are going, what the timing is, what the plan is. For a long time I read that as not trusting me to drive.
It is not that. Being a passenger with no information is not restful, it is just powerless. Those are different things and they feel completely different from the inside.
What works is when we are both up front, both able to see out the windshield, both clear on where this is going. Then the speed is fine. It is only unbearable when one of us is in the back with no view.
Jana's confession, which took guts
She said something on this episode that I did not expect and have been thinking about since.
She told me that sometimes, when something starts lighting me up, she notices herself quietly putting the brakes on. Not deliberately. Somewhere underneath, before she has decided anything.
And she has done enough work on herself to ask why, and the answer she found was a fear of growing apart. That if I get too lit up by something out there, the version of us that sits on the couch together might not survive it.
She called herself an anchor. I would not use that word, but I understand the mechanism, and I think it is far more common in long marriages than anybody admits. We tell ourselves we want our person to flourish. We also want them to stay exactly where we can reach them. Those two wants do not always cooperate.
I have my own version running in the other direction. Jana comes alive when we dance. Choreography, movement, learning a routine. And for years I have been dragging around a story that I am not somebody who can learn steps, that I do not do well with choreography. That story is nonsense and I have known it was nonsense for a while, and it still shows up and makes me reluctant about the exact thing that lights up my wife.
So she brakes me and I stall her, both of us quietly, both of us thinking we are protecting something.
The only thing that fixes it is saying it out loud, which is what she did on a podcast, which is more honest than I managed.
You can always see somebody else's fire
This is why I trust the fire more than any calendar system.
You can tell a good fire from across a yard. You know within a second whether a fire is right or whether somebody has ruined it. It requires no expertise at all.
You cannot tell when it is your fire, because you are the one standing there holding the logs. You are warm, you are feeding something you built, and every single log is a good log.
That is the thing about our weekend. The speeches are good. The fundraiser is for a friend who broke his neck in March and it matters enormously. The houseguests are people we have been trying to see for months. Not one item on that list is junk.
The logs being good is the entire problem. If they were bad we would have declined them.
A couple of weeks ago Jana and I walked three houses down to a neighbor’s fire pit. They already had a fire going. We brought our own cups, sat under the oaks, and talked for a few hours, and it was one of the best nights we have had this year.
That fire was the right size. Nobody was pouring on. And the reason it worked is the reason our Fridays do not: somebody had built it to exactly the point where people could sit close, and then they stopped.
Where this sits in the formula
What do I want to experience? A week I am actually present for. Not a week I survive and then feel good about having survived.
How do I want to grow? Into somebody who can leave a fire alone once it is right.
How do I want to contribute? By saying the schedule out loud, so the person next to me is not on an island.
How lucky am I? That every log on this weekend's fire is something I wanted. That is a problem worth having and it is still a problem.
The Living Lucky® Practice
Exercise: Look at this week. Find the point where it was already good, and identify everything you added after that.
Reflection question: What did I add to my calendar so I could stop having to decide?
Journal prompt: Where am I quietly putting the brakes on somebody I love, and what am I afraid of?
Action: Say your whole week out loud to the person you share it with. Including the parts you have not figured out yet.
Frequently asked questions
Why do I keep overcommitting even though it stresses me out?
Because surviving a heavy week feels good afterward, and that feeling is what you go back for. It also removes the ongoing work of deciding how to spend your time. A full calendar is easier to live with than an open one, which is why capable people fill theirs.
How do I know when I have added too much?
Find the point at which the week was already good, and look at what you added after that. Everything past that point was poured on. The additions are usually fine individually, which is exactly why they got added.
Why do we argue more during busy weeks?
Usually because one person is processing the logistics silently and the other reads the silence as absence. The argument looks like it is about timing or gear. It is about whether you are in it together.
What is the driver and passenger dynamic?
One partner leads the planning while the other follows, and the roles swap depending on what is happening. It works when the passenger still has information. Riding along with no idea where you are going is not restful, it is powerless.
Is it normal to hold your partner back without meaning to?
It is more common than people admit. When somebody you love lights up about something outside the relationship, a part of you can register it as a threat and quietly apply the brakes. Noticing it is most of the work. Saying it out loud is the rest.
How do I slow down without losing momentum?
Build the fire to the point where everyone can sit close, and then stop. Momentum is not the enemy. The enemy is the belief that if you load it up now, you will not have to tend it later.
Our fire pit is going to be lit again this weekend, after the speeches and the skiing and the fundraiser and the drive.
I am going to want to put more logs on it.
We Create Our Luck®.
Hear the full conversation on the Living Lucky® Podcast with Jana and Jason Shelfer, Season 11, Episode 47: "Are You Making Your Life Harder Than It Needs to Be?" Listen to the audio, watch the video broadcast, and tell us one commitment you are taking off your calendar this week.
