I lack style
I've spent the last couple of days trying to get myself organised.
I have notes and to-dos everywhere, across apps, accounts, and calendars. I have multiple pending to-dos and priorities. I have shows and series on the go and a desire to consume them all. I have a favourites list, bookmarks, and read-later lists overflowing with content. And I can't make head nor tail of it.
Everything is a priority. And in that space, nothing is.
Everything and nothing is the same.
Yesterday, I was trying to find something I had read by Steph Ango but hadn't recorded somewhere in my notes. While browsing their blog unsuccessful in finding what I was looking for, I read a couple of Steph's small, concise essays. They are deep, considered, and quite beautiful in their own way, similar to a caligrapher's brush.
The latest one What can we remove? and the line sprung out at me.
Systems want to grow and grow, but without pruning, they collapse. Slowly, then spectacularly.
I feel like that's me at the moment. The last week was supposed to be a holiday. It instead just became a week away from work. Things had been getting wound up continually over the last few weeks, more and more piled on, and so this was supposed to be a time to unwind. But instead it snapped back hard.
We spent a day in the car driving to Victoria, having put the dog into the kennel in the morning. The next day I received a frantic phone call from the kennels that Frankie was ill and bleeding everywhere. He needed to get to the vet, it was serious. We were lucky that one of my best friends had moved Adelaide in the last couple of week and was happy to be our emergency contact. I hadn't thought we'd need him straight away. We spent the day mostly panicked rather than relaxing while we waited for news. The next morning I was on a flight home, Frankie couldn't go back to the kennel and we were still unsure as to what was wrong.
By the time I landed the vet had given him the all clear and I could pick him up in the afternoon after they kept him on a drip for fluids and observation. He turned out to be fine, having had the equivalent of a panic attack at the kennels that expressed itself physically. He needed a couple of quiet days but by the middle of the week he was his old self.
So rather than a holiday I had time alone. I was hoping to use it productively - to get things done and do more of all the things. But I didn't.
I watched some TV and spent days in the garden weeding. It is the time of year when it's dry enough to get into the garden before it is overwhelmed with weeds. I listened to an audiobook and resigned myself to joining Frankie in recovery mode. I liked this post from Doug Belshaw about the Four Work Modes, and realised that recovery is what I needed. Novelty had been where I had been operating for quite some time, reactive and scattergun without focus.
Focus. I keep coming back to that - and my lack of it.
There's been too much on. Too much to focus on. My Job and House and Family and Work and Career and Finances and Relationships and Social and Recreation and Health and Spirituality - all the time and all at once.
In the Four Work Modes, Doug pointed out that quadrants differ in terms of Energy and Routine. My Energy has been waning over the last few weeks, having been High at work for some time now. Now I was in Recovery, overstimulated and undernourished. What was missing from my experience was Routine. It's something I have been trying to work on since January but I've found it hard bed one down that works.
I walk the dog 6 out 7 mornings in a week. That's been good, except when the weather disrupts it. That change has been positive. It also doesn't seem to work in terms of making other changes - like going to the gym, trying to do that after a day at work has not happened.
Steph has another post that clicked with me - Style is consistent constraint.
Style emerges from consistency, and having a style opens your imagination. Your mind should be flexible, but your process should be repeatable.
My everyday life lacks style. I've never gone out of my way to define it, but style and routine are missing aspects of me. I have a style when it comes to work, writing, and creating—but not in living. I think this is mostly because I've never given it a thought, just moving through time and space. Similar to January and wanting to define my personal vision, I just hadn't thought about it before. So that's my challenge now. To go and find my style and build out a more positive routine.