At the beginning of this week, I crossed a whole bunch of things off my to do list. And not because I had completed them - I had very much not done them. Simply because I finally accepted that I had reached my limit, and that some things (actually, a truckload full of things) had to go.
Happy Overwhelmas
Winter is supposed to be the dreaming time. It’s getting darker, stimulating production of melatonin (the sleep hormone) in our bodies. The dropping temperatures make our bodies work harder, and therefore require more rest. We’re being invited by our natural environment to rest, to go inward. And yet. ‘Tis the season that we, as a society, go batshit mental.
I try to keep Christmas as relaxed as possible, but I also want it to be enjoyable for the children. They’re just 2 and 5 - prime ages for magic - and I know they won’t be this little for long. So we put up the tree and the decorations, we went ice skating (I worried they’d be too young, but the 5-year-old was doing spins, unaided, by the end of it!), we went on a light walk through a wood, and we went on a Winter wonderland walk to see Santa. We had to find a bunch of other small things to fill the advent calendar with because I didn’t want them having chocolate every day (my first born does not do so well on chocolate, it’s an emotional rollercoaster), but I also didn’t want a load of plastic tat for the sake of it, so that was quite the challenge. Then we had to organise presents for the kids, and I had to make presents for everyone else. I decided a while ago that, rather than participate in the festival of capitalism that is December and just buy a bunch of stuff for the sake of it, that I would hand-make everyone’s presents with love. I stand by the idea, and I do enjoy making everything, but one day I will learn to start in September instead of 1st December and actually give myself a decent lead time so that I’m not in a flap about postage deadlines by the 12th.
It’s not just the Christmas chaos, either. This month I had:
The submission deadline for part three of my book manuscript
Not one but two assignment deadlines for the Counselling course I’m studying
A client workshop to run
Three client proposals to work on
A business innovation funding application to submit
All the end-of-work admin to sort out before the winter break
A Winter Solstice gathering to organise
Substack posts to write (I love writing to you all, but it’s still got to get done)
A Facebook writing community to manage
A creative retreat to set up
An online course to finish creating
A book outline to work on
An Arts Council grant to apply for
Oh yeah, and two kids to look after
Then, with all of that looming above me, my car broke (like, completely broke - out of action for two weeks), and both my kids came down with bugs. At that point, I had to take a step back and say, ok, enough is enough, this has to end.
There were two things on that list that were non-negotiable - the book submission deadline (because there’s a publisher with a contract who’s expecting words to arrive) and the course assignment (because if I don’t submit on time, I fail). Everything else is, frankly, ludicrous. What was I thinking? I couldn’t even begin to tell you. Except that I do this on a regular basis. Somehow, I always think I have capacity. So I keep saying I can do things. I keep expecting myself to do more things (this probably has to do with the “I need to achieve more” mentality I talked about last week). And I keep wondering why I’m not managing to do all the things. It’s only when I sit down and write it all out in a list (like the one above) that I realise how crazy it all is. How impossible. And then I realise that stuff has got to go.
Scribbling out
So I got ruthless with my list. I roped in help at work (and I’m so lucky that I have the greatest team in the world) and pulled in some help with the proposals. I managed to get the funding application in and the necessary admin done, and then put my out of office on and checked myself out of work for the week so I could concentrate on the book. Which I did manage to get submitted in time, and I’m still not sure how. Having a co-author helps no end - if my awesome business partner wasn’t at the other end of WhatsApp with moral support, I think I’d just be under a pile of paper crying by now. I wrote this week’s Substack post a day late (oops, hi, did you notice?), and I took a break from my Facebook community for a while week (and they were all very supportive, which was lovely). I scaled the creative retreat right back, so that now it’s going to be simple creative prompts and exercises by email, and I haven’t done that much to promote it, just allowed it to be a space mostly for my existing audience (you can join here - I think the calmness of the simplicity will fit beautifully with that quiet time between Christmas and New Year, and give us a lovely creative antidote to the busyness of the season). My husband took the kids out for a while so I could get my assignments done.
Everything else on the list, has gone.
The client workshop… I asked a member of my team to deliver for me (which she did, she was amazing, the client adored her so much they’ve asked for more work in the new year - win!).
The online course on unblocking your creativity that I had told myself had to launch in time for people to buy it as a Christmas present… it’ll have to wait until January.
The outline for the new book… I’ll probably work on that in my downtime between Christmas and going back to work, when life has quietened down and I actually can turn inward for a bit.
The Arts Council grant… there’s another round in March, I’ll try for that one instead.
Oh my god, it felt so good.
All these things I’d convinced myself were absolutely necessary… they really weren’t. Would it have been good to get them all done? Maybe, but I’m not sure I’d have done them to the best of my abilities while I was that thinly stretched. I definitely would have been an exhausted wreck by the end of it. I think I will enjoy all those tasks so much more if I do them when I have time to do them.
Mindful working
That realisation was a game changer for me. These were all things I wanted to do, that I had chosen to do, and yet I was running around in a flap getting stressed about them, and trying to rush through them all so I could get them ticked off and move onto the next thing. That’s ludicrous. These are all things that matter to me - wouldn’t it be so much better to spend time enjoying doing them? To savour them, to get deeply involved in them, and to do them to the fullest of my capabilities so that I could be really proud of the end result?
When we’re just charging through our task lists, not stopping to pay attention to, or take pleasure in, what we’re doing, and rampaging like possessed cattle in pursuit of the next thing, our work becomes the creative equivalent of fast food. We’re churning stuff out as an addiction, just for the sugar rush, not even tasting it on the way down. If we can slow down and really pay attention to our work, that’s when we can get a real sense of enjoyment and fulfilment. That’s when we can appreciate how much we’ve achieved and maybe feel like we have done enough, rather than constantly not feeling good enough as I talked about in my previous post.
So cross things off you to do list. I can’t tell you how freeing it is. How much lighter I feel now.
I mean, I still have three pairs of mittens to knit, four jars of marmalade to finish and a Winter Solstice gathering to host before I can start on doing all my Christmas baking for my family, but that’s the level of crazy busy that I think I can handle.
In January, I’m having a damn rest.
3 pairs of mittens to knit? Doesn’t one mit take like a week in and of itself? Haha.
I liked the line that nature is slowing down and our bodies want to slow down, so naturally our society goes batshit crazy 😝
I am not alone with these long things to do lists. I feel like it’s one of the composites of being a creative. Something that we will constantly have to wrestle with. ❤️