“Our time is so finite” I state tearfully to my husband, as we head back from our second trip to the storage container one Sunday afternoon.
9am the following Thursday, high on painkillers to mask the burning sensation of sciatica running up and down my leg, I sit in bed with my laptop perched on a pillow, attempting to work through the brain fog: productivity or bust.
Last November, neck-deep in the chaos of seasonal busyness and financial hustle, I read a quote by Nicola Jane Hobbs that crawled under my skin like a tick and continues to nest there against my will.
“Growing up, I never knew a relaxed woman. Successful women? Yes? Productive women? Plenty. Anxious and afraid and apologetic women? Heaps of them. But relaxed women? At-ease women? Women who don’t dissect their days into half an hour slots of productivity? Women who proritize rest and pleasure and play? Women who aren’t afraid to take up space in the world? Women who give themselves unconditional permission to relax? Without guilt? Without apology? Without feeling like they need to earn it? I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman like that. But I would like to become one.”
Far past the need to explain to Hobbs or justify to myself or anyone why I am not a ‘relaxed woman’ even when sailing away on painkillers, my brain marches wilfully through the faces and names of women in my life, personally, professionally, or who exist for me as words, thoughts, and a name on a page. Relaxed is not the the name of the quest; not the goal; not the filter through which I sort through names and personality types. Instead, I think about the women in my life who appear to be intentionally, radically unhurried. Not relaxed but, rather, committed to determining their own pace and interests. Women moving at a speed that actively rejects ‘hurry up’ mode.
Over the last eighteen months, much of my professional writing work has come with the mandate to write ‘at pace’. This is necessary to keep my anchor gig—the one that buys our groceries each month. It took me a number of months —six at least— before I could train my brain and shift my behaviours to learn this skill. It broadly means no rabbit holes. No languishing on source collecting or tangential research. Productivity, pace, discipline and continual movement sit at the core of this kind of writing. Sometimes, more than sometimes, it bleeds into other areas of my life. Like the thorny branches of the raspberry vine on our old allotment, I must continually try to prune it back, or it will take over every inch of space. As it turns out, you can have too many raspberries.
For each of the eighteen months, I have also wrestled with my own judgement of this kind of work. Is it ‘good work’? Is it valuable? Or is it just a means to buy spaghetti? Writing quality aside, I can acknowledge this kind of work has reinforced my predilection to busyness and productivity. I am rewarded for my hustle with meagar financial gains alongside the dangling carrot of (very occasional) subsequent opportunities. Simultaneously my ‘at pace’ efficiency tugs at my underlying fears of what might happen if I don’t say ‘yes’ to it all. Fears that have been expertly conditioned and crafted by 40+ years of culture and chronic illness.
In the face of all of this, going slow does not mean a state of soft, languid, fucks-free relaxation, as parts of the quote suggest. The practice of an unhurried intention is a muscular, defiant energy that comes with the practice of (re)committing to oneself over and over again. It is faith that even faced with the discomfort of our own anxieties or societal expectations, slowing down for long enough to acknowledge them and trusting the process won’t liquify our bodies from the inside out. We are not caterpillars in the process of becoming.
Choosing to return to writing each month or few months in a way that doesn’t involve pace or speed, that turns towards vulnerabilities, rabbit holes and the exploration of self rather than away — this is the kind of defiantly unhurried woman I would like to continually become through practice. My word for 2024, I’ve decided, is ‘no’.
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