Last week I told my friends, via Facebook, that I am “emotionally, physically, mentally, financially and spirituality exhausted. That my brain was picked, my advice was done, my favours empty and that my bank account was rolling backwards.”
I did not post this for sympathy, I just felt everyone needed to know in one swoop that I, a usually really optimistic person, had nothing left to give and needed to focus on myself. I did not expect so many people to be surprised by my honesty or to privately message me to say they felt exactly the same, but didn’t want to put that into the world. Why are we afraid to share how we’re feeling when it’s not calmness or happy emotions?
I have had this Buddhist quote with me for over twenty years, I remember first writing it out and pining it to a notice board when my daughter was a toddler. It resonates with me as much now as it did in 1995.
“Suffer what is to suffer, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both suffering and joy of facts of life.”
As far as I am concerned things cannot always be brilliant and to expect them to be is unrealistic and just sets you up for disappointment. I’m not depressed or feeling down, I feel quite upbeat considering everything, I have just decided I’m taking 2021 as my year of being intentionally slow and for self restoration because I am tired. I don’t want to burn out, I don’t want to kill my creativity, I don’t want to cram my writing into the corners of the days when I’m knackered, I want to be 100% present for my family, my nearly 14 year old son needs extra support because, like his whole generation, he’s lost a year of school and has been stuck in the house missing his friends and missing out on what should have been his time to begin exploring the edges of his freedom. I’m lucky to be working from home, but I hate it and miss my crazy, creative and kind people, but I still have a job to do and I want to do it well. Why people were surprised to hear me say I’m done I really don’t know? We’re still midst a global pandemic, if anyone isn’t feeling complete spent, overwhelmed and exhausted by it all in some capacity I really want to know what their special power is.
The best thing about sharing how I was feeling and my need for boundaries to be held firmly in place was I felt lighter. After our very small New Year’s Eve celebrations I stayed up and wrote a short story, probably the one, after some work of course, I’ll submit as my contribution to Common Gossip; an anthology of working class women.
For me this is not a year for New Years Resolutions, but I have set my word of the year, which unsurprising is SLOW.
This newsletter I want to leave you with two things, my very best wishes for this year, and this entry from Virginia Woolf’s diary 90 years ago;
January 2, 1931
Here are my resolutions for the next 3 months; the next lap of the year.
To have none. Not to be tied.
To be free & kindly with myself, not goading it to parties: to sit rather privately reading in the studio.
To make a good job of The Waves.
To stop irritation by the assurance that nothing is worth irritation [referring to Nelly].
Sometimes to read, sometimes not to read.
To go out yes—but stay at home in spite of being asked.
As for clothes, to buy good ones.
When we can safely go out again I am going to Rodmell to see Virginia Woolf’s writing lodge in the garden of her country home, Monk’s House in East Sussex, it looks like a perfect place to be slow.
Lovely, Denise. Contains quite a few phrases I'll keep remembering: "Suffer what is to suffer, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both suffering and joy of facts of life.” And Virginia Woolf's words also helpful and thought-provoking.