When You Can’t Do It All
How I learned that stepping away doesn’t mean giving up...again
The day started on a high note. I got up early, had time to do my usual morning routine, and started work feeling good—present, clear, and productive.
Then I got a message—there was a problem with the Rover walker. Sully, my dog, had been acting aggressively and they had to cut the visit short. It wasn’t a total surprise. All week he had been showing signs of regression. Something had been building, and this was the tipping point.
I left work early to work from home, telling myself I could still manage both. But when I got home, I realized quickly that wasn’t going to happen. Sully was worked up, jumping on the counter, eating shoes, digging in houseplants. It felt like all the rules we’d built together had disappeared. I tried to work from the same space, keeping one eye on my screen and one on him, but I wasn’t really doing either well. I was bouncing back and forth, worried, distracted, trying to pretend like I could handle it all.
Part of me felt like I should be able to. I didn’t want to make him upset, especially since he usually only goes in his crate at bedtime, and crating him during the day tends to stress him out. But after trying to push through for a while, I hit a point where I couldn’t keep juggling. I finally put him in his crate, even though I felt guilty. Then I took myself to a different room, and I just focused on what needed to get done.
That one act—removing myself physically and mentally from the situation—was the only thing that helped. I calmed down. Sully actually calmed down too. I finished my task, and when I came back downstairs, it was like we’d both been reset.
What I took from it was this: people always say to prioritize, but they usually mean prioritizing tasks. What I learned is that you also have to prioritize where you are and how you're showing up. It’s not just about checking the right boxes—it’s about protecting the energy you bring into each box.
Sometimes the thing that seems most urgent isn’t the thing that actually needs your attention. Sometimes, what’s most urgent is stepping away. Even if that feels like failure in the moment.
And maybe you don’t have a dog tearing through your living room. Maybe your version of this is trying to answer emails while your kid is asking for help with homework, or taking a work call while also trying to make dinner, or agreeing to a last-minute favor when you’re already stretched thin. We all have our Sullys in different forms.
And yeah, it might feel like you’re letting someone down when you hit pause—on the call, on the conversation, on the commitment. But that space you give yourself? That’s the thing that actually lets you come back better.
Calmer. Clearer.
More capable of handling it all.
So no, stepping away doesn’t mean you're failing.
It just means you’re choosing presence over panic.
And that's what allows everything else to work itself out.
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