I'm resigning from grind culture

3 ways I'm trying to stay a human, being | And more live, no-filter midlife chat this Friday evening!

Hello! How are you? I’m in the middle of a pretty busy period, and I’ve written the post below - in stolen minutes - about busy-ness and rest. Can the two co-exist? Is it possible to be busy but not stressed - at least, not totally stressed all the time - and what are useful ways to create a sense of space even when life is full? Meanwhile, on Friday night at 7.30pm I’m so looking forward to joining

Lindsay Johnstone

,

Caro Giles

and

Layla O'Mara

for another chat about midlife, bodies, body image and libido. I know it’ll be a full and frank discussion - here’s the Zoom details to join us:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85773596161?pwd=HinBILa6kfZ91aClCHERkie8vYfmlI.1
Meeting ID: 857 7359 6161
Passcode: 182219

Next week I’ll be posting a mid-cycle post for paid subscribers - we’ll soon be halfway between Samhain and the winter solstice on the Celtic Wheel of the Year. If you’re not yet a member of The Wheel, you can join me anytime to receive posts about these festivals and be part of online circles every 6 weeks - little slivers of seasonal, embodied connection.

The acer in my garden - the leaves turn the brightest red in November just before they all fall off. Trees know how to rest.

“Our drive and obsession to always be in a state of “productivity” leads us to the path of exhaustion, guilt, and shame. We falsely believe we are not doing enough and that we must always be guiding our lives toward more labor. The distinction that must be repeated as many times as necessary is this: We are not resting to be productive. We are resting simply because it is our divine right to do so.”
― Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

My schedule is pretty full at the moment with a combination of the different jobs I do - postnatal doula, group facilitator, writer and yoga teacher. As is the case with freelance work, sometimes I have quieter and sometimes busier periods. Because I truly love my work, I often experience a sense of satisfying fullness, a pleasurable juggling of meaningful things. But of course time is finite even if filled with good moments, plus life be life-ing sometimes, so feeling overstretched or overwhelmed does happen.

I want to pinpoint the sneaky ways productivity culture can accelerate us even further into stress, pushing a nervous system that might already be teetering on the brink into overdrive. I have so much to learn about perfectionism, not overworking and valuing my own time properly, but I have made a little headway, I think, into not continuously overdoing it. What follows are three ways - none of them exciting or ground-breaking, I’m afraid - that help my system cope when there’s lots of different things going on at once. Instead of novel hacks I think we often just need the simple stuff, the approach that I know in my bones is good but that I can easily forget or stray from.

One of the things I love most about Tricia Hershey’s brilliant manifesto Rest is Resistance, quoted above, is the way she talks about oppressive systems and her determination to opt out of them. Talking of grind culture and productivity culture and white supremacy and capitalism she says, “they cannot have me”. That always stayed with me, that idea that even within certain restrictions, I have some choice and agency (I won’t address here how privilege intersects with our capacity to resist, though that’s a huge topic - here I’m interested in how we can find ourselves willingly participating in overdoing or burnout). I sense there are growing numbers of us who are no longer keen on sacrificing ourselves to the gods of productivity. Here are three things I’m trying to remember to observe, to help me stay a little more human.

1. Ten per cent more slowly

When we have a lot to fit in, it stands to reason that we might need to move faster. Sometimes we have no choice and we have to rush from place to place, but often we habituate to this pace even when it’s no longer necessary. Rushing can become it’s own kind of addiction, giving us the satisfying sense that we’re extremely busy and important! (I’m sure you are extremely important, btw)

Even on the busiest days I generally have the opportunity to move more slowly at certain points, to not rush in particular moments. Sometimes it might be 30% more slowly, sometimes only 10%, but it all counts towards avoiding deeper stress that can be more difficult to back my way out of.

Whether it’s hanging the washing or cooking as part of my doula work or leaving with enough time to do nursery pick up without running there, I often have a choice about whether to speed my way through it or just slow down a little. I feel small but remarkable changes in my body when I do this. Things feel more manageable. I am aware of the sense of being human and not machine.

2. Postpone

This is almost certainly really obvious, but I often forget that some of my deadlines are self-imposed. Literally no one else gives a shit if I do a certain thing a few days or weeks or months beyond what was in my head - or else they might be mildly disappointed or annoyed, but we’ll all live right? Recently me and a colleague postponed something and though we’re both keen to complete it and enjoy that get ‘er done sensation, it can wait. It’s all ok. And a bit of space opened up in a week when it was feeling a little hard to breathe.

3. A non-negotiable lack of productivity

If I had a super busy week I used to essentially punish myself by removing the one thing that was restorative, energising, restful or fun - that tea in a cafe, that walk, that conversation with a friend - because I’d feel like I didn’t have time for anything “unproductive”. I don’t do that anymore. Although these moments of pleasure can feel like an extra thing on my to-do list and clearing them out might bring temporary relief, experience of keeping them has showed me how they can be the one thing keeping my head above the water in a sea of full-on days and weeks. The unproductive, the frivolous, the moment of lightness however small or short - they stay in my diary.

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I’d half written this piece when I saw an Instagram post from Nicola Jane Hobbs that shared a similar sentiment - to finding a sense of unflappability amongst the madness.

nicolajanehobbs

A post shared by @nicolajanehobbs

Her post reads:

“Motherhood is teaching me to relax with the chaos, with the messiness and unfinishedness and uncertainty. It’s teaching me to relax with my imperfections and vulnerabilities, with my feelings of guilt and self-doubt and anxiety.

Because I know that if I wait to relax until the baby is napping and the washing is done and the emails are sent, I never will.

And so I am learning to relax moment to moment, amongst the sacred chaos of life.

May we relax with our unfinished to do lists.

May we relax with the mess.

May we relax with the chaos.

May we become relaxed women together.”

I used to share the same sense, that all the conditions needed to be perfect before I inhabited a different way of being with all the things that I have to do. Now that feels unrealistic and maybe unnecessary too. Maybe this is us, practising being ourselves, amidst the endless ebb and flow of life.

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Ok friends, that’s all for now. May you find little pockets of space and joy amongst the fullness,

Love,

Chloe x