Put some sides on my plate

There's a calendar that Marilyn put up in the bathroom with inspirational sayings on it. The May calendar has been preaching to me, "Our life is frittered away by detail...simplify, simplify." That's attributed to Henry David Thoreau.
I don't know if Marilyn picked out that calendar with that particular message in mind, but it sure sounds like her. She preaches to me frequently about how I have too many things on my plate. I can't do all I have in front of me and do it well. I need to start saying "no."
That's not particularly my nature, hence the need to hear that. I am too quick to say yes to things, and I'm not a great delegator. A lot of things end up as seeming my responsibility, and sometimes I don't put the effort in them they deserve.
I have several other things I am currently involved in, beyond our newspapers. I work with United Methodist Men in eastern North Carolina, I help with the church's newspaper for that area, and I work with the local library board. I can't say that any of the three require twenty hours a week, but they do add up.
We've got a big United Methodist Men weekend coming up, and there is a lot that needs to be done. I had several other things that were also pressing me.
I sometimes sense God's hand in all of this, sometimes hearing my prayers, sometimes hearing the prayers I should have said.
Well, as I was heading off to Raleigh to a meeting I really didn't need to go to, but felt like I should, I called the fellow who was in charge. We were planning an event for August, and really should have been a month further along on it. Given several questions that had arisen, I had asked him to survey the others involved to see if they felt we should move forward or not. He had not gotten back to me, and I assumed no news was good news, let's go forward. But I felt this nudge to just check with him.
Well, it turned out that there had been some others that felt it would be best to wait. So I pulled off the side of the road, tied up the loose ends of the conversation, and headed back home as I needed to.
The next day I was preparing to go to Raleigh to work on the church newspaper. The fellow that I work with on it, who works in Raleigh, suggested that he come to my office to go over the paper. That also was an answer to prayer.
There was a newspaper work thing recently, some things I had been doing. We decided to re-assign some of that to one of our other staffers. That wasn't a conscious decision I had been working on, just something that sort of happened. It made a lot of sense, though.
The difficulty with having a lot of things on your plate is making sure you give the things that are really important the attention they deserve, and you don't get bogged down with things that are really not that important.
I clearly have trouble making that distinction, but I don't want to shy away from something I really should be doing by saying I don't have time. I am willing to maybe not do some things I should as well as I should (is that selfish pride?) rather than not do them. I am going to try to do everything well, but sometimes I won't get there.
As I am finding out, I can delegate some things to get them done. That is hard for me, and I have a hard time accepting that some of those delegated to will do it differently that I would do it. That's exactly what I need to accept, though. Often, it will get done better than I could do it, because they will put more time in it than I could have.

We have been sliding into a web page for the newspaper over recent months. That has been a major undertaking for us, and my wife, Marilyn, has been the guiding force for that. I appreciate her dedication in learning all that it requires to get this done, and her dedication to get it updated on a timely basis.
My younger daughter, Kelly, has been helping us out in the office and she has been helping out on the web page. She's offered several ideas which we believe will improve it over the next few weeks.