It came as a surprise to me when I was working through my coaching sessions with my friend Steph that a recurring member on my lists of values, goals, and ideal working situations was stillness. Rest. Quiet, unhurried work. I pinpointed that part of why I enjoy backpacking is because your only responsibility is to walk. You get to be at peace among the trees. You can only carry what you can carry, so there’s no pressure to achieve. The journey is the destination, etc. etc.
This is from what I’m realizing is one of my favorite albums: Dave Matthews Band’s Busted Stuff. You should check it out.
I suppose I’ve sort of always known this about myself. In school I much preferred to be finished with a project well before its given deadline. I was so excited the first time in elementary school that I was given homework assignments, and I’m pretty sure I did all the homework for the week at once. In college, my roommate and I took a majority of the same classes, and it would stress her out when, the night before a paper was due, she was just diving into writing while I was printing out my final draft. There’s no extra motivation to me in bumping right up against a due date. Obviously I deal with the pressure when I have to, but it’s not how I function best.
I’d never equated this with stillness. Stillness makes me think of yoga people, Zen masters, content grandmothers, quiet monks. I am none of those things and don’t actually aspire to be. I’ve enjoyed jobs where I wore a lot of hats. I like switching gears periodically. I’m super efficient at working through my to-do list. But apparently at the end of the day I like to be still.
I think what stillness implies to me is just a slower pace. Andy and I really like Greenville, SC, and the feeling I always have when we’re there is that things are a little easier than they are in Atlanta. It doesn’t take 45 minutes to run an errand because of traffic. You don’t have a million different options for everything you want to do. It’s quieter. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of people hustling there and making big things happen, but in general the day-to-day seems simpler.
I had a few weeks in November where I experienced almost crippling anxiety. There was a lot changing at work, and I was tackling some tasks that were new to me. While I could logically tell myself that I was perfectly capable of completing them, my psyche was having none of it. There was this feeling that started in the pit of my stomach, a plummeting feeling, and it rendered me incapable of forward progress. I kept thinking I was getting over it and then a new piece of information would surprise me and there I was in the anxiety again.
Obviously I survived, and I did not fail. I wish I could tell you what it was that got me through it, to help you if you’re in a similar place, and to remind myself if I’m ever there again, but I’m not sure what the secret was. I was very gentle with myself, I can tell you that, and I cut myself a lot of slack. I’m glad I came out on the other side, because I know I couldn’t have sustained that level of worry for much longer.
My hope for the work I do this year is that I’ll find time for more stillness in my days. That by managing my own time I can head off that anxiety and feel less undue pressure. I know it takes gumption and grit to succeed as a writer, and I can dig that out. But I’ll be digging it out in my own way, in my own time. In a quiet, unhurried way.
P.S. I also combat visual clutter in an attempt to quiet my brain.
