Every Time, I Have Returned
“Don’t rush” the messages always say. After I post something about needing to restart work after a break, whether a holiday or a move or a week that fell apart, I get beautiful, supportive messages that urge “don’t rush, don’t rush, don’t rush”. And while I feel and embrace the loving intention behind the message I always think “but I’m not rushing?”.
The reason I don’t feel I’m rushing is because every time I post a Story saying something like “now I’m just trying to remember what I actually do for work”, it’s because I’m usually a couple of days into the pull of wanting to work. It is not that I am rushing myself to get down to the grind stone and do something I “have to” against all the fibres of my being. Instead, all the fibres of my being are saying “we want to go back”.
There was a time, years ago now, that if I wasn’t working I anxiously itched to go back to it, when even a dog walk felt like a waste of time pulling me away from my whole purpose. After that there was a time where work was a necessary evil I tried to squeeze and squish into the smallest shape and space I could. I lurched, as I seemingly always do, between extremes, overcorrecting burn out by trying not to work at all. But it was never the work that was the enemy of my peace; it was what I was trying to make the work be.
Now I sit much more centrally on that spectrum, although the exact position is always in flux - sometimes I want to do more, sometimes I want to do less, as is completely natural as my energy shifts. But mostly I am trying to exist in a place where the work itself is more neutral. It is not my everything, my sum total source of fulfilment and joy, but nor is it something hard and terrible to be endured. It is a purposeful and enjoyable part of a bigger, beautiful life.
This means that I can go away for two weeks, be present in reuniting and reconnecting with my person, and not feel guilt or shame or the “have to’s” of work tapping on my shoulder. And it also means that in the last few days I started to look forward to coming back to the desk, back to the page; I started to crave the sense of purpose, the connection, the momentum. It feels like how I want it to feel like, for now.
There is just that bit of fear.
After every break, there is that bit of fear that I might have let go a little too much, that I’ve lost the grip and now my wrists are too weak to grab it back. This fear is usually driven by the fact that when I try to imagine what I’m going to start work on, what I’m going to say, I can’t. I can’t imagine the kind of things I write and publish, and therefore can’t imagine where to start. And when you can’t imagine where to start, you panic; and when you panic, there’s no room for imagination. You become a snake fighting its own tail, eating up your own creativity in overthinking instead of unleashing it.
Here’s what I said to myself last night: “every time, I have returned”.
After every holiday and every break, I have returned to work and managed to start again. After every move, every break up, every creative drought, I have returned. After every doubt in both my will and my ability to carry on, I have returned. After every period I thought I never would, I have returned. Every time, I have returned.
There is something in the inevitability, something in the long historic line of returnings, that calms the panic. Every time I have returned, and I will return again. With the panic lifted, with the tail removed from your mouth, you start to see that all the pieces are where you left them. You remember the note of ideas you’d started weeks ago. Something you read in your book reminds you of a thought you had earlier and that that thought is probably an idea for something. The shape of it starts to form, you think of the first line. And just like that, once again, you have returned.
