Natalia Naman Temesgen: It's the most hectic time of the year

I'm a little frazzled this week. We're less than two weeks from Christmas, and I still have handfuls of things to make, bake, buy and wrap. Oh, and I have a lengthy list of projects to complete before year's end at work and at home.

And I've got to find sitters for the holiday parties, and Spanx for the holiday dresses, and scribble out the holiday cards, and drink enough coffee for all of the above.

Most wonderful time of the year? Maybe. Most hectic? Hands down.

I've written enough columns about being mindful and present that I should know better than to get caught up in the frenzy. Yet here I am, as in years past, trying to juggle it all like a wanna-be circus act. Why does this always happen?

Perhaps it's another classic case of "doing too much."

I was sitting in the breakroom at work this week, talking with a couple of other ladies with young kids. We were discussing the mommy guilt that comes from dropping them off before work when they're whining for us to stay, or from coming home from work only to share a few, jam-packed hours together.

My own mother was in earshot. "Your generation wants it all," she said. "You want to be supermom and superwife and superwoman at work, and you feel bad when you can't meet impossible standards."

We all sort of acknowledged that she was right, but went right on discussing how we planned to do the impossible.

The tendency to do it all kicks into high gear around this time of year, but as I reflect on last December I remember that a lot of the frenzy ended up being for naught.

I wanted my daughter's first cognizant Christmas morning to be picture-perfect. She had a bunch of gifts under the tree, but after opening one she would run off to play with it and have to practically be dragged back to open another. We could have just given her a cardboard box and she would have been happy. I really didn't need to go so overboard.

Even among us grown-ups, there was greater joy in spending the holiday together than opening the gifts we exchanged.

So maybe I'm actually done buying gifts. And maybe the neighbors can go without my baking. Maybe we'll skip a holiday party and just relax at home. Maybe the to-do lists won't all get checked off before we ring in the new year.

And maybe that's OK.

Because maybe that stuff doesn't matter as much as it feels like it does. Sitting down, breathing, being quiet, drawing near to the ones that make us feel whole, holding them close and saying "I love you" -- those things matter just as much as the rest of it.

In fact, they seem to matter a lot more.

Natalia Naman Temesgen is an independent contractor. Contact her at nntemesgen@gmail.com.

This story was originally published December 12, 2015 at 8:33 PM with the headline "Natalia Naman Temesgen: It's the most hectic time of the year."