This month has been a good test: nothing good has happened, I haven’t achieved any of my current priority goals and I still feel deep into my chronic inflammation recovery post-celiac diagnosis. In short, January has sucked a fair amount.
This has allowed me to explore three ideas: patience, focus and boredom.
My flat is “uncertain”
I’ve been needing a lot of patience to deal with the frustration of my flat purchase. I had an offer accepted in September (!) and come January, for a flat with no chain, we are still going through the process. My life is half in boxes and the excitement has given way to uncertainty, stress, frustration…and patience.
I said from day one this time would be different. In the past I have been on top of solicitors in despair, but this time I decided I wouldn’t do that. It was a good call because it turns out this flat has required the most patience from me.
After a series of bad news too annoying to recount, the last one has come in January and has put the whole purchase in question – even my solicitor has said “the timeline is uncertain”, a word that felt like a stab in the stomach.
As I wait for an email that never arrives and brace myself for an email that could arrive, I see the value in patience.
Keeping things going with no big wins
Studying for a career change, working for money and parenting occupy my life and slowly grind me down with responsibilities and no big, clear pay offs.
I will one day qualify as a counsellor but for now it’s a bunch of admin, applying to get a clinical placement to not get anywhere.
I get paid for my time at work and that is great, but without a long term plan for my money making skills, it can sometimes feel a bit hamstery-wheely. And of course, on a freelance basis it never feels secure enough so it’s plenty stressful too.
And parenting – I love my daughter so much…AND being with her when I am in a funk is not always the easiest.
The value of focus
Focus is a great antidote to the uncertainty of life. There are always a few things we can control and focusing on those is allowing me to build useful things.
It’s quite a new thing for me to be able to apply focus for a sustained period of time and achieve longer term goals. I started this website about 18 months ago and slowly and steadily I have grown the amount of people visiting it. Whenever I feel a bit low or insecure, I check my analytics and shock myself to think that hundreds of people are visiting my website and spending meaningful time with it.
Starting a newsletter has been super great at organising my ideas, reading and research. Knowing I have to get 2-3 articles done for each issue means I don’t read 15 books at once but rather focus on something and don’t give up when it’s hard, like, ehem body phenomenology.
Explorations in boredom
I have been exploring boredom for the last 18 months too. Busy with my work/study/parenting combo I hardly do anything for fun or entertainment. That has got my Dionysus quite upset at times and yet I feel it has helped my creativity and developed certain artistic talents and ways to see the world.
But I have learned that sometimes I need to let my hair down – metaphorically, clearly. I have opened up a little bit more to building friendships and making plans. Because life has to be lived, which is something Emmy van Deurzen may say. Particularly in its paradoxes and tensions between building and destroying, order and chaos, playfulness and seriousness.
It all came to its logical conclusion through a dialogue between my Apollo and my Dionysus in a two chair exercise I did with a colleague – to whom I am really thankful for witnessing. It was quite fun too.
