Beauty on the Backroads

It’s a third of the way through January, and I already feel like I’m doing it wrong. Doing what wrong, I’m not sure. It’s just that I have this sense that I’m somehow squandering the new year. That a new start should feel more productive, more monumental. While I appreciate the opportunity for renewal that comes with the start of a new year, I kind of hate all the pressure that tags along. We’re “supposed to” dream big and plan and set goals, none of which are bad things, but how can any one day of the year hold that much expectation?

If I’ve learned anything over the years it’s that the planning, the dreaming, the goal-setting is a constant process of re-evaluation. We can make our plans, dream our dreams and set our goals, but life often has other plans for us and if we don’t hold those things loosely, we can easily convince ourselves we’ve failed if we don’t achieve what we set out to do at the beginning of the year.

It’s the bigness of the dreams, goals and plans that bothers me right now. A dream, goal or plan doesn’t have to be big to be good.

—

I spent half of last year dealing with an ovarian cyst. Between the discovery of it, the surgery to remove it and the recovery from surgery, it was five months, not all of it active, but the issue was looming in the background. In the fall, before surgery, my health took a scary turn–high blood pressure and extreme anxiety. I had been taking on too much and not taking care of myself.

I was squeezing extra work–writing, reading–into the margins of my day. I felt really productive most days, but all that constant working was taking a toll on my body. The month of recovery after my surgery left me with quite a shock. I couldn’t do all the things I normally could do. I rested. I read. I watched shows and movies.

And I thought about what needed to change for this year. What settled in my soul is a hard statement to put into words.

The truth is: I want to do less this year.

(There. I said it. And I survived. Even now, though, I want to erase it.)

Do less? Who wants to do less? Who makes that their goal?

I am fully aware that we live in a world where more is the word that grabs our attention. Every advertisement convinces us we need more of this or that. More savings. More stuff. More money. More, more, more.

I’ve been wrestling with this plan to do less for months, and I’m still not completely comfortable with it. Will people think I’m lazy if I say I want to scale back and do less? Will I appear apathetic or uncaring when I say “no” to some things?

Honestly, I don’t care what people think about this plan. I have no proof, but I think this elusive quest for more is killing us, and I’m over it.

I didn’t know how much I needed the break from everything until I was on medical leave, and it’s almost embarrassing that it took a medical reason to force my rest. The pace of life slowed way down for me in November, and I tried hard not to let it ramp up again in December. Fortunately for me, my body wouldn’t allow me to jump back in to life as it was before the surgery, so I had to ease into it.

Now it’s January and the pressure to “get back to normal” is creeping back in. But I don’t want to go back to normal. Not the normal that had me sobbing in two doctors’ offices with terrifying blood pressure numbers and prescription anxiety medication in my hands.

Friends, that’s not normal. It can’t be. (Please don’t hear me say that anxiety is not normal or that it’s somehow wrong to take medication. That’s not what I’m saying, not at all.)

As much as I might want to do more, this year, I’m focusing on doing less.

—

You might know that I choose a word every year–something to center my life on for the year, a word that becomes my focus.

Last year’s word was “intention.” It was a good word, a good plan for the year, forcing me to think ahead about some things and not just drift through my life. I didn’t write much specifically about that word, but I do feel like it changed me and helped me grow throughout the year.

For this year, I pondered a couple of words that went along with the theme of less doing, more being, words like rest and return, but the one that keeps speaking to my soul is “abide.”

It’s a bit archaic, the meaning I’m going for. It’s the idea of living or dwelling with. It’s not quite the opposite of intention, although it feels a little like it is. I don’t mean to accept whatever comes my way or tolerate bad behavior or anything like that. I just need to reconnect with this inner sense of being.

Apart from what I do and produce in this life, I want to abide as who I am at my core. And to do that, I have to strip off all the expectations that what I do, what I produce, makes me who I am.

It is no small task.

One way I’ve started implementing the idea of abiding is by letting the morning hours be leisurely. Last year, I was waking up around 5:30 a.m. trying to write or otherwise do creative work for an hour or so before I felt everyone had to start getting ready for work and school. A lot of mornings, I would be frustrated because my kids wake up early, and I wanted to protect that hour. I did get some things done, but I always felt a bit rushed in the morning.

Since my health issues, I reformed the morning hours. I still wake up around 5:30 a.m. but the first little bit is for spiritual practices. I listen to a short prayer program called Pray As You Go, and I read the daily passages offered in the Book of Common Prayer. These are things I had abandoned in favor of productivity last year, and while I don’t hold any expectation for these practices (i.e. if I start my day with prayer and Bible reading, the rest of the day will go well!), they do help me fight the urge to do.

When I finish those two practices, I make coffee and breakfast. I read for leisure. And then I start getting ready for work. It’s a rhythm that’s working for me right now, and I do feel better able to start the day on a more centered note.

—

The temptation, with a word like “abide,” will be to let some things slide. I am letting go of some things this year, but my hope is to create more space for the things I feel are more important. For example, I’m planning to take one afternoon/evening a month to leave work and head to a coffee shop and focus on my writing until I’m ready to come home. I will sacrifice some family time to do this, but if I want to accomplish my writing goals, I have to.

In other ways, I’m starting over. Like with running. I’m back to the plan I used when I first started running, if only to ease my body back into the habit. My muscles remember, though, and as badly as I want to just run and keep running, I’m forcing myself to stick to the running and walking plan for now. Last year, I ran five 5k races which was not something I planned to do. But I consider it a great accomplishment. Last year, I wanted to try a 4-mile race for the first time, but my husband got sick and I couldn’t follow through with that.

This year, I want to run a half-marathon with my husband–13 miles to celebrate 13 years of marriage. This is a goal that terrifies me, especially since I’m practically starting over with running. Maybe that doesn’t sound like it fits with the “do less” plan. It is probably the biggest goal I have this year, and it will take discipline and focus. I will have to do less of other things to stick to my training plan.

—

Forward. Forward. Forward. 

It’s the way we’re always told to be moving. To grow is to advance, and I don’t think it’s always wrong, but I don’t think we give enough credit to the idea of circling back. Of returning. Of starting again. Sometimes we need to return to the places we’ve been, to walk a circle instead of a straight line, to revisit a place, physical or mental or spiritual, that we think we’ve moved on from. And we need to see it as part of the process, instead of as negative progress or regression.

If you find yourself in a place of returning, a place of circling, a place of starting over, please know that you’re not doing it wrong. More isn’t always better. Forward isn’t always the best direction. Growth and change can happen when you’re standing still (just ask the trees). It can happen when the world is cold and dark (just ask the seeds planted in spring).

Whatever you choose to focus on this year, may it bring you joy and peace.