Unsqueezing
In this episode, we explore what to do when we’re under too much pressure in the midst of change
It’s been a bit rough here these past few weeks: still struggling somewhat with the continuing after-effects from my un-fun Christmas COVID, then getting ill again, which in turn has pushed me hard up against the deadlines for some sizeable writing-projects I’m supposed to be working on right now. Perhaps not yet quite as bad as Douglas Adam’s “the sound of deadlines whooshing past”, but certainly a lot closer to that than I’d like.
Feeling kind of squeezed, you might say…
The writing feels blocked. So far I’ve spent a whole week stuck on a single paragraph, writing and rewriting and rewriting, and it still doesn’t feel right; I’ll no doubt have to do it again, and again, and probably again, until it does finally…
Or maybe not?
Maybe stop trying so hard, trying to force it to happen, and instead allow myself to just let it arrive in its own way to its own kind of unsqueezing. Let the block let go of itself,, and allow the words to flow again.
It’s that so-infamous mistake, isn’t it? - trying too hard, when the trying is itself the thing that’s ‘trying’, in that other sense of the word. Very trying; very trying indeed. “Try hard to relax”, they say; “if it isn’t working, you just have try even harder to relax”…
Instead, allow the unsqueezing to be itself. I stop trying so hard to relax, and instead find myself just relaxing anyway. Getting out of the house at last, talking with people, silly jokes and joshing and banter in the checkout line in the supermarket. Talking with colleagues about new ideas, new ways to describe the work that we’re working on together. Excited, for once, for the first time in way too long; the work feels worthwhile again.
Yes, of course there’s still way too much to do; and yes, of course the deadlines are still way too close to that dangerous state of whooshing-past. But there is at least a sense of movement now; of purpose, of pointfulness, we might say, rather than the otherwise all-too-ubiquitous feeling of pointlessness.
Festina lente again: ‘make haste slowly’. I do need to remember that point.
So yes, this is only a short episode this time. Sorry about that.
(Or maybe not so sorry, because I know I have a bad tendency to write posts that are way too long… Perhaps consider this one as making some amends for that fault?)
Yet don’t worry, though. There’s plenty more I need to talk about here: for example, I have an episode lined up about rules and Bolsheviks and how majority-rule so often isn’t; and also a sizeable set of episodes about family and objects and history and various themes of that kind. But for now, I’ll stop here: I need to let go of the struggle, get back to the unsqueezing, and create the openness to get the other things done.