Proportional Anxiety

It’s not that I don’t know what to do. I just get tired of making myself do it, you know?

But life is so much more complex at any given moment than any list can suggest, how is one to gather it all in?

—May Sarton, At Seventy, January 2nd.

I am reading all your end-of-year lists with joy. I am looking at your lists-to-start-a-year with interest. I love these things, even if they are all generally the same batches of what to read and watch and do. I love to read and watch and do. Thank you for summarizing what worked and what didn’t—I learn that way. If you can make a mistake and share the results with me, it might save me a step.

I, on the other hand, accidentally didn’t write for three weeks.

Other than lists, of course. I am always writing lists to-do, to-think, to-read, to-make. I like lists. I don’t feel tyrannized by them, even when they are long and delusional. There is more abounding goodness available than I could ever possibly take full advantage of in one lifetime, and keeping lists helps me remember that. God knows we all need reminded.

Do I feel bad that I didn’t write for three whole weeks, when I have a proposal waiting to be polished and sent? When I have a manuscript with just a few more tweaks to make? When the best advice is that writers write and here I am wondering if I’ll ever be the consistent version of myself I want to be?

No. And that is one way I can mark growth. My anxiety is proportional.

Another way I can see that I have grown is my resistance to all the great programs available this time of year¹. There are zoom webinars and workbooks and 3 steps galore right now, and many of them are great and helpful I’m sure, but I’ve been around that block so many times I should be teaching. I don’t say that to brag. It’s just that I have hacked the life out of the lifehacks for women who want to have their best year, their most productive, most physically fit, most peaceful, most successful year/quarter/month/week/day.

I have also slowly realized over the last few years that a lot of the classes and webinars offered for writers are aimed at new writers, or young writers, and I don’t fit in with those campers anymore. Lots to learn still, most definitely. And lots of writers younger than me who are farther along and have much to teach me, for sure. But I am no longer a beginner.

It’s not that I don’t know what to do. I just get tired of making myself do it, you know? I just need a little break, so I’ve taken one. No goals, no word of the year yet, no more/less list. I haven’t broken a big project down into quarterly targets. Haven’t reverse-engineered my year or reviewed the last year. I don’t know my targets. And it’s just fine. Maybe my “January reset” will start in February. Or next Monday.

View of the Waterfalls at Tivoli, 1788, Jean Joseph Xavier Bidauld (This is basically what our Christmas Day hike looked like)

I turn 50 in April can you tell?! It’s not that I don’t care anymore. I probably care more than ever, because the numbers I’ve passed are more than the numbers ahead, even if they are just numbers and my brain still thinks I’m 30. My body knows it’s not.² The days matter, and life is indeed “more complex at any given moment” than any list or program or schedule could account for.

These are wild times, and no amount of perfect living or optimized people will make them tame. When I pray, there are long lists and I depend on the Holy Spirit to sort them out. But I keep praying, and it’s an ebb and flow of connection and forgetting that I am connected, of hope and feeling the rope slip. I keep holding on, even when hope is that sick feeling just below my ribs that reminds me how little control I have on outcomes.

Jesus has a tight grip, I remember.

Man I wish our only concerns could be how we are going to smash our goals this year, how fit we’re going to be, how organized, how published, how well-read. It’s fine that those are on our lists, but we all have bigger fish to fry than just optimizing our own selves into a better version. Still, we make the lists and it’s good that we do.

Some of my list from the last several weeks:

1. Amelia Grace was born December 17, making us the grandparents of five (!!) whole persons. I just don’t have words for this. Still working on my Funky Grandma era.

   

   She is this perfect.

2. We went for two epic hikes, “epic” being a word that, as a midlife woman who is out of shape, I define by the views. But our Christmas day hike was also epic because it marked the start of a new empty nest tradition, and also we could have died.

   

   Happy old folks, including Scout. She loved it but she limped for two days afterwards : (

3. I was asked to share a devotional at a small gathering of women and I practiced this mantra: do not let a five minute talk turn into six days of anxiety. I kept the anxiety proportional.

4. We gathered at our home after Christmas, and though not everyone could make it, it was joyous chaos and I loved it.

5. New bookshelves were installed in the living room and I unpacked books I’ve been looking for since August.

6. This weekend (maybe today?) I will begin sending my proposal to agents. I’m not sure how to keep this anxiety proportional because I know it is generally a long process full of rejections…send help?! Send your agent my way?

7. I plan to distract myself from #6 by regular writing, and working out a map for my next book idea. Gluttony to the maxxxx.

I do have goals and I will make my more/less list, but for now I need the lists of things that are pure delight and no discipline. Thankfully there are plenty.

1. Remember the first months of the pandemic, when there were free art classes and online writing groups and zoom meetings for every special interest, and every day there was another opportunity to join with others on a screen and really seize the moment? Best of times, worst of times.

2. Case in point: I did a simple and light-weight workout two days ago, one that would have been a breeze a year ago, and this morning I still cannot walk in a way that covers the sins of my glutes and quads. Turns out hiking once a week does not a muscle keep.