It feels like we are in a kind of limbo, as we wait to see what will happen with the American election. Although my anxiety from earlier in the week has calmed down and I am no longer doomscrolling and checking the news feeds incessantly, I am still agitated and a bit preoccupied.
I wanted to write today about maintaining spaces for creating that buffer us from external forces, that allow us to do the work we need to do. Something I know I crave in times of uncertainty. But this no longer feels like the right approach. The world and its worries cannot be held at arm’s length, it cannot be shut out, even for time to create. The space I need right now needs to be accepting of the problems of the world, it needs to hold that reality while I dream of another. I want all the work I do to be grounded in what is real; I don’t want to play the game of ignoring that which is difficult, even if it makes working easier.
For months now I’ve been trying to discover for myself ways to work that align with the beliefs and values I hold, how I want to be in the world. And I keep coming up against this dichotomy of DOING and BEING. Where work feels like a ‘doing’ place and the rest of my life feels like a ‘being’ place. This is what keeps us caught up in circles of anxiety about being productive or successful in our work, because work is tied to outcomes and activity. It prevents us from realising that work is just another expression of who we are.
”Who are you without the doing?”
Possibly the most important question I’ve ever asked myself and the most terrifying. I heard it first on the Hurry Slowly podcast with Jocelyn K Glei (posted exactly 2 years ago today!) and I couldn’t get my head around what she was asking. How can I be me if I don’t do anything? And then we found ourselves in lockdown and unable to do the things we might usually do to prove to ourselves, to others, that we are worthy, that we have value. Who am I without the doing? I was living it and experiencing it and realising that even without those busy activities, without the visible work, I still exist as a human with a need for connection, for curiosity, for kindness. And then I got sick with Covid, and found myself in a lengthy recovery full of fatigue and unexplained pain. Doing was not really an option. And again I asked ‘Who am I without the doing?’ and began to understand what it meant, finally.
I can’t show you who I am easily without doing things. But I can trust myself enough to know it’s true, regardless. Uncoupling those things in my mind – the truth of what I know about myself and the need to prove it to others, that is what this question unlocked for me.
When I am uncertain I forget things about myself. I feel compelled to protect myself and retreat. I forget that I thrive when I am connected, when I allow myself to think into the difficult places. Today I am maintaining a space that I need creatively. This isn’t about shielding from the news, about placating or comforting myself through distraction; it’s about engaging with the things I need to think about, the things I need to confront. The work I want to do, the work I need to do, can only happen in this connected space, not in the disconnected space.