It’s been a while

On trying to get unstuck and out of a rut

A recent work trip to the Isle of Wight where my family joined me after

This year has been busy. Not in a ‘I have so many exciting things to tell you’ way, just in a ‘I’m not sure why life always seems so busy’ way. I often feel as though I am on a treadmill, waiting for the next opportunity to hop off and take a rest, but that never seems of materialise. Or when it does, I am too overwhelmed to rest and so find something else that I deem to urgently need my attention. My washing machine is looking particularly clean right now, as is my kettle and dishwasher. My head however needs its own form of descaling.

My social media doomscrolling has also reached new heights, to the extent that I have now purchased an app that will block all of my other apps for periods of the day, which will potentially be the best £40 I have ever spent. Although I am now obsessively checking on my screen time rather than the apps themselves, so there is still an itch that I am struggling not to scratch.

I know these patterns are signs of burnout and are not conducive to good mental health. I also know that doing ‘more’ can rarely help you to increase productivity. But these are very hard patterns to break.

I talk about this in therapy, I teach about it in training, but I also know how tough it is to put into practice. How challenging it is to sustain a certain way of living, particularly when you don’t have the support structure around you to maintain any semblance of a work – life balance. I have long given up finding this utopia, instead accepting that sometimes life will have ease - and sometimes it won’t.

Regulating by being more cat

This is very much like mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness is not about being in a constant state of awareness and connection, but rather having the ability to notice when you are not – and then having the tools, motivation and capacity to do something about it. It is the constant back and forth of being disconnected - in your head, running through the multiple things on your to do list, worrying about impending deadlines, ruminating on that conversation that you wish you had handled better – and then becoming re-connected with the present moment again. Breathing. Really seeing what is around you. Grounding yourself to the here and now.

But sometimes things are so overwhelming, with too many things coming at you from too many different angles, that it is impossible to see what is staring you in the face. At other times you can see, but don’t feel able to put the things into action that you know will help, simply because the demands and pressures of life are just too much. Instead, you try to do more, hoping to reach the finish line sooner. Or you do less by letting go of the things that you actually enjoy, just to buy you that little bit more time to get your to do list done.

That maths makes sense. Doing less of one thing = more time to do another. Except it isn’t simply a transaction of time when what you are removing is joy. Taking away one pleasurable thing that normally takes an hour, will very rarely translate into an hour of being able to work.

It simply adds to the burnout.

I have been trying to draft a particular piece for this newsletter for at least two months - maybe even longer. It is now in excess of 2000 words, which is far too long and yet I haven’t been able to stop myself from trying to make it how I want it to be. Although what ‘it’ is, I actually don’t know. In the process, I have avoided writing anything else. And then I avoided writing that piece. All signs that I need to stop and reset, but signs that I have continued to miss (or ignore).

IOW

I do some of my best thinking when I’m in the shower and the other day as I rinsed my hair I realised that the thing that has been gradually slipping away from my life is creativity. Throughout my life, I have always been creating things: projects at school, upcycling projects at home, handmaking the invitations and favours for our wedding – I find such peace from making one thing out of something else. Even the businesses I have built have involved creating in one way or another. In particular, the six therapy rooms that I carefully curated, spending hour upon hour in charity shops and on Marketplace, were a labour of love. This is also why writing has also formed such a crucial aspect of my grieving. I need to be doing something - creating something - to make sense of what I am feeing. Without this I can now see that I am untethered.

One of my beloved therapy rooms

Every day I watch my daughter flex this muscle, which I now realise she has potentially inherited from me. She draws constantly from the moment she wakes up. She cuts, sticks, moulds and builds, translating the ideas from her incredibly active mind into something tangible. They are a stream of her consciousness that leave a trail of chaos around the house: tiny cuttings of paper, random pieces of lego, abandoned pens, clumps of discarded sellotape - there is no hiding where she has been.

As I write this, I feel shame at how often I feel frustrated when I am clearing away these artistic footsteps. But maybe this frustration also holds some envy - maybe I too want to be creating my own chaos. Using my own hands to build, type, sew and paint. Trying things without expectation, just for the sake of it. Doing something not for how it turns out but simply for how it feels in the doing. I am in awe of how my daughter simply throws herself into projects without getting caught up in planning or trying to find the perfect time or conditions. She just does it.

Because there is no such thing as the perfect time.

I should probably listen to this and find a way to begin to scratch this lingering itch.

Starting with just writing this post and pressing send….

Michelle x

Some of my creative endeavours over the years (including a cat bunkbed from my childhood suitcase!)