Earlier this week I sat with our director and presented the FY24 budget for my three county libraries to our city council. I needed to say that here because never in my life did I imaging this would be a sentence I would say, a thing I would do. It’s both incredible and weighty. Nested within that request is the well-being of sixteen other individuals whom I supervise (another thing I never imagined for myself), and while I ultimately know any decision our local funders make isn’t personal, for me it remains personal because this is my work, and I can only do work in a deeply personal way.
I haven’t written the past two weeks because right now, everything feels very urgent, and so when I enter my safe spaces, I engage my compartmentalization skills to give my soul a chance to restore itself for the next series of urgent days. It’s been almost nine months since my burn-out epiphany. Nine months of active work on myself and the practices I engage in, and while the difference between then and now is profound and beautiful, my life has not become less stressful. In fact as my spawn move through major life transitions, it has become even more emotionally complex. Parenting adult children is just a different kind of intensity from when they all wore diapers and snacked on dry cheerios.
While we were waiting to give our budget presentation, I commented to our director that I am so grateful for my daily practices, because without them, I’m not sure I could navigate the daily deluge of ways life demands my energy. I’d have no sense of time whatsoever if each day I didn’t place my forehead on the mat, untangle my feelings between the pen and paper, and complete the stress cycle with my daily walk (I highly recommend Burnout: the Secret of Unlocking the Stress Cycle to learn more about how to close this cycle in your own life.) These practices are working for me. They don’t remove stress from my life but they allow me to understand and respond to my emotional and physical needs in the midst of the stress.
The flip side of knowing what works for me is knowing what does NOT work for me. Facebook and Twitter do not work for me. Overhead lights after dark do not work for me. Loud noises, small talk, bad smells, passive-aggressive behavior, most news cycles, rants, diets, christianity, workouts at the gym and most conversation after 8pm or before 7am don’t work for me. Publishing in this space on the weekend is not working for me. Which begs the question, what will work for me?
One great lesson I am learning by experimenting with new practices regularly, is to not simply discard something if it doesn’t fit right the first time. True, there are things that simply aren’t going to fit no matter how you try them, but those tend to be easy to walk away from. The very fact that today I couldn’t not sit down to write proves to me that this practice isn’t one to leave behind, at least, not today. Instead I need to shake the practice up, adjust it and try finding a different way to incorporate it. While all the experts say consistency is key, I find it suits me better to be adjustable and curious rather than to hold myself to arbitrary standards. This is the type of grace that continues to sustain my burnout recovery and for which, I make no apology.
It’s possible things may be a bit sporadic in this space as I try to incorporate the practice in a new way. I’m thinking it will be a midweek publication rather than a weekend activity, and that somehow writing become more of a daily routine rather than a big weekly dump of creativity. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll try again, another way. Isn’t that fun thing about life? We all have infinite chances to start over and try again as long as we don’t let shame have the last word.
Fortunately for me, I’m turning 50 this week (or rather, completing my 50th year, because let’s be honest, that’s how birthdays work) and I have a lot to say about it. The last year held many profound changes and realizations, but that’s a train of thought for the middle of the week. Big thanks to those who are reading, and lots of good karma for all of us who are trying, and stumbling and starting again. Every minute is ours to shape. May we all keep showing up with the courage to try again.