Every year I look forward to the shimmering band of days in late December between the Solstice and New Years when the studio is closed and I’m (supposedly) on vacation. Every year, being an individual of deeply contrary modes of thinking, I set myself up for failure.
I will take these days, I tell myself, and finally relax. I will take these days, I tell myself, and finally finish all of these looming projects. I will get the jump on this thing I need to do in January. I will schedule every appointment known to man in four days. I will finally get that overdue emissions test.
You can tell which one usually wins out.
This year I feel that contrasting pull more acutely, probably in no small measure because I spent that whole first vacation week working. I temporarily joined the coaching staff of the New England Center for Circus Arts for their Aerial Skills Week—an adult circus camp of thirty-odd-hours crammed into four days. It was grueling and it was mostly glorious. I kept all my fledgling (and not so fledgling) aerialists safely off the ground. I dragged myself home by sheer force of will with podcasts and pumped forearms.
I let myself collapse, and eat cheese, and shortbread, for one whole day. And then the litany of ‘shoulds’ began.
Once upon a time, my partner and I used to fully fuck off for this week, renting a cabin in remote inland Maine and spending seven days oozing between the pool and the hot tub, playing hours-long board games, and getting woefully lost and frozen on snowmobiles.
Those days feel like a relic of the past. These days we’re always too busy: we have a show coming up, or there are too many projects in the air, or the pool isn’t open because of the pandemic so why even bother?
This year there’s not even any snow on the ground to metaphorically or literally slow me down. Instead, there’s a heavy, creeping fog, and a heavy creeping fear of what my near future will look like if I lean into this all-sugar diet. Sugar is slow, and heavy (and delicious), and I need to be fast, ever-moving, ever crossing off the to-do list of small musts and large aspirations.
In the last few or five years, I’ve become acutely aware that I am very much someone who defines their worth vis a vis their productivity. At first, I leaned into that designation with a twisted sort of pride—can’t stop, won’t stop, watch me do it all. It’s hard not to embrace it. Our culture considers this something to aspire to. Productivity equals success! Besides, I get shit done—sometimes a pretty astronomical level of shit—and a lot of it has turned out, in my own estimation, and sometimes the estimation of people who review such things, pretty damn good.
It’s in the moments of trying to find a balance, of trying to let myself sprawl out on the couch and actively do nothing that it becomes an acute problem as opposed to a tendency to be harnessed to great effect.
I’m pretty sure most people don’t have to try to do nothing. Most people, I’m pretty sure, when they take an hour, or two, or heaven forbid three, don’t start down a toxic shame spiral of self-loathing. It’s a bad place to live and I don’t recommend it.
This week, to counter that I’ve tried, instead, really asking myself what I want. I’ve been doing a lot of that this fall, thanks in no small part to The Audacity Project—holding my plans and projects up to the light and seeing if they really glimmer in ways that set my soul on fire.
Writing an aerial pole act turned out to be a fast and hard ‘no.’ Revisiting the manuscript I finished drafting in early 2021, and actually doing something with it? A full-moon-in-clear-skies ‘yes.’
So, this week, in those moments on the couch when I haven’t gone to the gym or run the juggling act I’m debuting in just over a week, when I want to spiral, I’m looking at those big picture wants. As it turns out, one of them is to not feel like this, to not have a to-do list which feels so overwhelming that I can’t relax in the time when my job is literally to relax.
Realizing this want has really re-cast the shimmer of those other wants. Do I really want to start working on a physically and mentally demanding solo-show if it’s going to make me feel like a failure if I’m not constantly moving? Maybe not! Maybe the answer to the balance is actually taking projects off my plate so that I can feel productive, but not at the detriment of moving slowly from time to time.
One of my big wants for 2024 was to finally realize my long, and slowly burning desire to start a Patreon. My goal, for the last month or so has been to launch in January, and the great Rachel Strickland recommended getting some stuff already up before announcing so that there’s, you know, something to look at.
Pretty shockingly I’ve found it hard to get started on that content in this last month of absolute insanity. Pretty shockingly my first post did not write itself at the Subaru dealership while I was waiting to get my oil changed. Pretty shockingly, this post did write itself, after a nap a day, and lying on the couch contemplating this existence I’ve built for myself. Pretty shockingly, creativity needs room, and rest to breathe.
So, here we are, the morning after Christmas, when I told myself I would be at the gym, still in my pajamas, fog heavy on the ground, sugar heavy in my blood, resting, and writing.
Here’s to a slow year.
Photos by me during a much slower winter.
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