Cortisol-fuelled wellness

The irony of getting stressed by the quest to feel less stressed, and why loitering is delightful

I have a love-hate notice with to-do lists. I get the benefits:

1. getting all the disparate stuff in my head down on paper so it stops leeching energy each time it re-enters my mind

2. giving me a clearer sense of priorities vs things that can wait

But a to-do list is loaded for me - I have to hold it lightly in case it becomes a stick to beat myself with, a list of things I didn’t get to that makes me feel bad about myself. A list of things I must achieve easily conflates with the idea of task completion as happiness - once I get to this point everything will be fine! - the kind of treadmill approach that is utter fiction, and stops me from learning how to exist right here, right now, to be happy in the chaotic and work-in-progress energy of life.

Buddleja in July, embodying wild, chaotic, perfect growth

The satisfaction of ticking a task off a list is fine in principle, but it’s hard not to chastise myself if it doesn’t get done in the window that I’ve (usually arbitrarily) allocated it to. This is an example of the perfectionism I’ve realised that I bring to multiple areas of my life, an unexamined sense that my standard needs to be particularly high. If it isn’t, I’m left with odd feelings of disappointment and even guilt and shame.

I work hard at lots of things: interactions, tasks, projects. I make a lot of things into projects that don’t need to be (it’s very tiring).

Along with this meticulousness is a sense of urgency, a feeling that the thing needs to be done VERY WELL and NOW. One of the sillier areas this expresses itself is in wellness, where I “work on” feeling less stressed by trying to remedy stress in a fairly stressful way. This usually takes the shape of deciding I need to change everything about my life immediately: I need to eat more protein! I need to give up caffeine! I just heard about a new supplement that will help me and I must order it immediately! I need to do that training course and read that book on trauma that’s been on my bedside cabinet for two years! I need to fit in more weightlifting and cold water swimming and meditation and cardio into a week where I already don’t have any time!

I find I can often visualise the energy of something best by imagining its opposite. The opposite of this stressful energy is lightness: it floats, its standards are not exacting, it easily moves from thing to thing, it knows there is enough time. It’s a bit like this:

It feels at odds with the paradox of rushing into the car and speeding off to a yoga class, or for a calming walk, then hurtling back again and feeling pleased because I’ve ticked my mindfulness activity off for a day.

I do want (and feel like I need) to make small changes in my life, but making them slowly, one or two at a time, feels sustainable and doesn’t feed into this old, old pattern in me, which asks for so much, and asks for it immediately.

I suspect that becoming a mother and having your access to time, and control over your time completely put through the rinse cycle (for years) does increase this sense of urgency and panic when you do get a bit of time to yourself. Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks spoke of the paradox that the more we try and cram in, the more we feel there is to cram in. It’s so curious to me that slowing down - ostensibly being less efficient with our time - can actually stretch time, make it feel like there is more of it to go around.

Recently I came across Ross Gay’s short essay Loitering is delightful. In it (as well as noting how the way we value productivity is interwoven with capitalism and racism) he lists some of the synonyms for loiter: linger, loaf, laze, lounge, lollygag, dawdle, amble, saunter, meander, putter, dillydally, and mosey.

Oh, these words! I noticed how much I wanted to revel in them, the longing I felt to saunter, to potter (English version of putter?), how much I wanted to lounge and laze within their letters. There is power in these actions, they feel fundamental, just as powering on and achieving a lot in a short space of time also have their place. But how many of our lives have the balance way off, so much of the time?

If working hard like a good girl in so many areas of my life robs me of the ability to amble, to say to hell with the to-do list, then there is a kindness in the times I can opt to do a little less, and do it more slowly. It’s easy to judge myself for not making progress fast enough, or taking 3 months to finish reading a book (or having 5 books on the go at once - clear evidence of my flightiness and lack of focus), or missing weeks of exercise or good diet because of illness or stress, or needing to rest when I feel I “shouldn’t" need to. It’s harder to see these as valid paths or parts of myself, and meet them with love and empathy.

I do want a life where I run and swim, eat well, see friends, read books and do work that inspires me. I want these things to exist in the flow of my life without creating guilt if they don’t happen perfectly, or at all. I do want goals but I want the grace to hold them lightly; I want to get shit done but not at the expense of connection and kindness and presence. I want to lollygag, to dillydally and mosey, to remember that these are sacred acts and that when we lose the ability to partake in them, we lose a little part of ourselves that we are privileged to call human.

Also, hello! It’s been a while since I showed up here. It’s been a bit of a full-on month. In the next weeks I’m going to schedule the remaining posts from my month-long writing challenge with my friend Megan Macedo, so that all these posts are up and I can stop feeling like I need to get through the act of posting them! I hope it won’t feel too overwhelming to receive 2 or 3 posts a week for a few weeks. And in two weeks (30 July at 8pm) we’ll have our online circle for Lammas, the first Harvest festival on the Celtic wheel (for paid subscribers - you can upgrade for less than £5 a month). I really look forward to seeing some of you then.