Head, Heart, Hands #4

Letting go of the idea of "catching up," and 10 delightful links.

Welcome to Making Time. Each week, I explore the impact of time on creativity, ways to slow down, and scenes from my own life in rural Oregon. Head, Heart, Hands is a monthly feature full of links that delight me. If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe for free.

I’ve spent the last week in and out of bed. It turns out that it was, in fact, Covid. Thank you to Francis, who gave me the gentle push in the comments last week to take a second test.

This is the first time I’ve had it (that I know of), and I’ve rarely been sick the last 5 years, so there’s one more benefit of living out in the middle of the forest.

As I slowly returned to work this week, I started to feel overwhelmed. My entire schedule had to be rearranged to compensate for days that I missed, further throwing my carefully planned goals and routines into chaos.

For someone who thrives on order and feels more attached the productivity than I would like, this spells emotional disaster. How will I ever get caught up now?

But then, as I took my afternoon dog walk to the creek and watched those joyous critters paddle around, I realized something. When have I ever felt caught up?

This whole idea of being “caught up” is completely ridiculous. It never happens. It is, in fact, not possible because I’m always thinking up new things I want to do.

I have a mantra that’s been helping me out lately. Instead of thinking about getting “caught up”, I tell myself, “I have an abundance of fun projects to choose from today.” It’s not only a more helpful framing, but it’s actually true – unlike the notion that I’ll ever be done and settled.

(Some of these fun projects lately: harvesting apples, making compote, picking cosmos, playing with the dogs, drying tomatoes, learning about surface design, and hiking with new friends.)

Here are 10 more things that are delighting me right now:

1. 10 Books to Read in the Autumn. I’m a sucker for all these fall book lists, but I actually added many of these to my library holds.

2. I came across Jerry Seinfeld’s Duke Commencement address via starting from nix and enjoyed it immensely. “Just swing the bat and pray is not a bad approach to a lot of things.”

3. How to make a late summer flower cloud. Who doesn’t need a cloud of flowers hanging over the toilet?

4. The Ideal Routine Blueprint seems like the perfect little activity, because it’s just about time to update my daily routines for fall. Do you change up your routines seasonally too?

5. The Right Kind of Busy. This introduced me to the term “joyless urgency”, which comes from author ****Marilynne Robinson. That term really stuck in my mind as something to be avoided.

6. I recently went on a walk to collect color and it was absolutely refreshing. I chose red and was astonished by the way it brought forth other colors I hadn’t noticed before in my surroundings.

7. How many clothes do you actually need? There’s a magic number. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this. I certainly have way more than I need, but I find discussions about a chic, minimalist wardrobe with a single black dress in it rather… dull? It’s sort of like being told that I could be healthy if I just ate the same thing every day of my life.

8. Better than social media: how I built a private, independent database to keep in touch with the most important people in my life. Came upon this one via Chris G too, and I might give it a go! I love a system, I hate social media, and I’d like to reach out to people more often than I do.

9. Don't Give Every Minute a Job.

10. 75 Nice Little Things to Do for Yourself. Here’s a great follow-up to my recent post about daily treats! So many great ideas here. I’d like to create my own master list of ideas and steal many of these.

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