Am I doing it wrong?

Musing on time, walking and trees

Am I doing it wrong?

This is the question I’ve been asking myself recently. Am I doing it wrong, life? Because I think I’m doing the right things, doing the work, asking the right questions, (eventually) making the right choices… and yet I still feel like I’m running to stand still.

I’m constantly catching up with myself at the moment, ticking jobs off the list one at a time, adding three more. Every minute seems to be accounted for, even the ones where I deliberately take time to stop. A slow weekend breakfast leaves me feeling guilty that I didn’t make the most of the day and get outside into the garden sooner, or knock off a few more household tasks, or do that bit of admin that’s been hanging over my head all week… so if even resting doesn’t really feel like resting, I MUST be doing it wrong.

Apparently I’m searching for ‘yutori’ | @insighttimer

And when I’m not catching up because I feel like I’m behind, I’m looking forward. Looking forward to a time when I’m not staring down the barrel of a huge to-do list. Looking forward to the weekend, to a holiday, to a mythical time when I won’t have a million and one jobs to do, each completed task replaced by another and another and another and another and another until the arrival of death or insanity…

Too often I’m looking forward to, dreading, or mentally preparing for the Next Thing, instead of living and fully appreciating the present.

I was on a day out recently in a beautiful garden, learning some new skills and spending time outdoors with good weather and good company. Mostly it was very enjoyable, but by the end of the day I looked back and realised I’d spent at least half of the time mentally preoccupied by something I was desperate to get out of. I hadn’t been making the most of this one-off experience, I had been busy working out how to untangle myself from a future commitment. Before leaving the venue I stopped for coffee and cake. I could have sat peacefully in the sun, allowing my mind and body to rest… nope, I was checking emails and beginning the (unsuccessful) process of getting out of that thing I didn’t want to do.

I’m doing it wrong, aren’t I? Or is this just midlife? Is it just the treadmill of tasks that is inevitable at this stage when we’re juggling work, family, self-care, running the household, booking holidays, catching up from holidays, trying to have a social life, and still trying to feed our souls with creativity or enjoyable hobbies, while also carving out time for the rest we so desperately need.

Thankfully, the process of stepping back from at least three too many commitments has begun, and tiny pockets of time are opening up, though not enough yet to feel like I’m living the spacious, free life that I want. (Is that even possible, am I striving for something that doesn’t exist??) Yet I’m still surrounded by lists, tasks and clutter - physically and mentally. The house is a tip - an ongoing problem which deserves a whole other essay of its own - and not getting any better thanks to the fact that housework is the first thing to go when I’m very busy.

It’s not just the bin bags of clothes to be put away and piles of papers that are draining my energy - now my devices are at it too. Turns out clouds are not as big and infinite as you might think. Google, Lightroom, my phone - they’re all telling me on a daily basis that cloud they’re running out of storage space, they’re filling up. They’re under pressure, there’s too much stuff, it’s too cluttered in that cloud - clear it out! Or buy more. More, more, more. Just more things on the list of things to deal with, spaces to clear and clean and tidy.

The northern lights put on an amazing display above our heads a few nights ago. It was truly awe-inspiring. Looking up at the solar energy having such an effect on the night sky, visible so far by so many is one of those things - a bit like a thunderstorm or a clear view of the stars - that reminds you of your place in the world and how little control you really have. It was also one of those moments when time didn’t matter. Granted, it was only around midnight, and a Friday night, but I felt like I could have stood out there for ages - even if it had been at 3am on a Monday - to witness such a wonderful and unique phenomenon.

There have been seasons recently when time seemed not to matter so much. Remember lockdown? I know, I’d rather not either, but I’ve been thinking about the occasions in my life lately when ‘normality’ was disrupted and I didn’t feel under pressure. I’ve even found myself slightly wishing I was unemployed again, because in the immediate aftermath of losing my job there was a kind of blissful, carefree sense of having no major responsibilities. There was extra time, loads of it. I could take care of running the household and didn’t have to squeeze it out into evenings and weekends wishing I was doing something else more fun - or feeling guilty that I was doing something more fun instead of the shopping or hoovering or whatever. I gave whole mornings and afternoons to volunteering in beautiful gardens without feeling rushed or under pressure, or that I was compromising my spare time. In fact, it’s when I’ve felt most calm and relaxed in the past few months.

In lockdown I would take long, long walks, often listening to music, sometimes without, and usually lost in thought. My imagination was fired up then, I would think up long and complex daydreams, or solve real-life problems big and small by walking them out and allowing my brain to find the solutions; walking was a creative act. Now I seem to use it as a way to distract myself, and calm the turbulence of thought; to switch my brain off, instead of on. I’ve lost the ability to get lost in my own head, to create fantasy worlds and daydreams, and I miss it. I often wonder where it’s gone and if I’ll ever regain it. Was it unique to that very extraordinary time, a necessary way to escape? Or was it connected to my body chemistry - the presence or the fluctuation of hormones that I’m now lacking in perimenopause?

I used to start most work days with a walk, without worrying too much about time. I was working part time and so didn’t have to open the laptop at 9am on the dot. The start of the day could slide back until I had had my dose of nature, exercise and fresh air - as essential as a hit of caffeine. And, thinking back, nothing bad happened when I did that, when I prioritised this important thing. I did all the work I needed to do, I didn’t get fired, I was healthy and relatively happy and looked forward to my regular morning walks - even basing my future plans on them. I wanted a work life which would allow me to walk in the woods on a daily basis, if I wanted to, so I created Operation Walk in the Woods. This career plan has had many iterations, and nearly always featured me going freelance. Now I AM freelance, with a flexible work from home job too, and I’m walking in the woods less than ever.

How am I still doing it wrong?? And how do I fix it? Perhaps I need to persist with the work life declutter - paring back jobs and contracts until I find the balance between earning a reasonable income and having enough freedom to spend more of my time the way I want to.

I made myself take a walk this morning, and it felt good. I listened to birdsong, I saw a deer - I may even have heard a cuckoo. I stood with my back against a tree, breathing deeply and grounding myself in nature. The air was still and smelled sweet and earthy. It helped me unwind a bit, though I left the tree and the woods before I was really ready, conscious of the thin line that exists between losing myself in nature and giving myself more stress by falling too far behind in my day.

One day, I told myself as I walked away from the tree, hopefully very soon, I can wander without caring about time.