A couple weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. I grabbed my Kindle from the nightstand and opened the book I had started a couple days earlier. I looked in the bottom left corner and saw I was at 24% complete. Ugh, I needed to pick up my pace and read about 20% per day if I wanted to finish the book by the middle of January.
My long-form reading has been pretty unimpressive of late. To be honest, I’ve only read a handful of books each year since the late 1990s.
So, I promised myself that in 2020 I would try to read two books a month. Goals like this bring out my insecurities and compulsive tendencies. There I was, huddled under my covers with the soft glow of the Kindle in front of me, obsessing about my reading progress rather than enjoying the book itself.
Anything you can count or weigh or otherwise quantify has the potential to make me anxious. Last fall I read Twyla Tharp’s “The Creative Habit” (ummm, most of it). In the book, Tharp recommends taking a break for one week from looking at anything that involves numbers, like checking the time or monitoring your bank balance. When I read that, I was aghast—how in the heck would I do that for even half a day let alone a week.
Here are just a few examples of how tracking and measuring infect my daily life:
– If I have to be somewhere at a certain time, I will write out the tasks I have to do before leaving the house, scheduling them down to the minute—I’m talking showering, eating, getting dressed, and so forth. Veering off the timeline makes my jittery.
– I often review my personal growth, recounting the month and year when I quit smoking, the month and year when I started eating healthier, the month and year I originated my blog, and on and on. This might lead me to congratulate myself, but it can also trigger thoughts that I’m not moving fast enough. What exactly have I done for me lately?
– My brain is frequently in the process of making a deal with itself. I may look normal on the outside, but on the inside, I am calculating how many cookies I’m allowed to eat based on whether I had dessert last night. Or assessing my recent expenses and promising to do better. Or thinking about all the chores I need to do and bargaining for some free time with the hard-nosed project manager living in my head.
– I step on the scale every morning. I might weigh myself three or four times until I finally accept the best number. In the app linked with my scale, I often delete numbers I don’t like, so long as the overall trend isn’t compromised. The line chart that displays my weight over the past couple years is a frequent source of consternation.
– When I divide up the lunches that my husband and I make for the week, I weigh each container of food (in grams, of course, because it’s more precise) to make sure they are as close as possible to being equal (his portions weighing more than mine but equal to each other). I’ve gotten better about not doing this, but I haven’t completely abandoned the habit just yet.
This kind of thinking and activity has kept me in an almost constant state of agitation for ages. I set lofty (or even reasonable) goals and then make myself queasy because I’m afraid I’ll come up short. Then I distract myself from the steps necessary to achieve such goals, thus fulfilling my fear of failure.
But…I’m breaking this cycle, which I acknowledge will be a lifelong undertaking. For example: My previous blog post before this one was July of last year. What?! When I realized this fact in December, my heart sank. I should hurry and get a piece posted before the end of 2019, I told myself. When that didn’t happen, I decided I should definitely get a piece posted during the first week of January. All of this negotiating with myself had my stomach in knots.
I took a deep breath and conceded, “I’ll get to it when I get to it.” Why set unnecessary deadlines for myself? Life has plenty of time limits that we have little to no control over. Why create more of them?
Balance is key here. On the one hand, I spent many years procrastinating and not following my dreams—it’s good that I’m expanding my horizons and trying new things. On the other hand, I have to be patient with myself and ease up on the internal pressure.
My plan to start a kombucha business is fertile testing ground for promoting this kind of harmony in my life. Recently, I gave myself permission to back off from the original launch date I set for the business. I’m still proceeding with the numerous tasks that need to be checked off to get up and running. But I’m moving at a pace that suits me right now. I’m not going to worry about all the other people who launch businesses in less time or how old I’m getting (aargh, another number!) or any other measurements that suggest I’m not a “winner.”
When I was a kid, my mother was often running late, which meant I was often late to school events, dates with friends, etc. I remember feeling panicked and humiliated at keeping other people waiting or being the last person to walk into a room. This dread followed me into adulthood.
These days, I tell my 80-year-old mom not to hurry. No sense in putting her safety at risk by rushing around. People can wait. Being a little late is not the end of the world.
I’m taking my own advice and finding a way to advance without all the angst. Rather than dashing toward some contrived finish line in my mind, I’m focusing on being calm, living in the moment, and savoring every step.
As Laura McKowen says in the book that I did finish this month at my own speed: “The process has been the gift.”
My unfurling is at its best when I slow down and stop counting.
Bittersweet Nugget 