That's what I say to my friend Joy on the phone while we each surveyed our overflowing calendars for open spaces to meet. Over the last 18 years, I've been on a mission to live less as a maniac by not packing the vehicle of my days with so much luggage (meetings, projects, events) and so much pressure to drive fast that it's hard to pull over to the side of the road of the present and just breathe.
"How's that going for you?" you might ask.
"How much time do you have for me to answer?" I might respond.
I can remember precisely when Mission Be-Less-Of-A-Maniac landed in my lap. I was in Boston at a conference where I was overcommitted every which way to Sunday, Jupiter, and exhaustion. I was in deep doing a lot of things that didn't align with my spirit, body, or even values at times, just three years past my first cancer diagnosis that called me to the carpet of how to live. I wasn't sleeping much in between horrible indigestion, migraines, anxiety, and a strange wound on my heel that wasn't getting better. Granted, I was in a shoebox sized hotel room with windows that only tilted in a few inches although I was with a good friend who treated me like I was sane person. Dear reader, I wasn't at the time. There are moments in most of our lives when we can see the edge and how close we are to or over it.
Eventually, I realized I had to quit a bunch of things in a hurry, and I did, only to find myself hobbling around the streets of Boston, guzzling Maalox out of a paper bag, popping Excedrins, carrying around a giant chocolate chip cookie that no longer made sense to me, and crying fiercely. Bostonians who passed me were nonplussed -- I guess a lot of people wander the streets weeping. All I knew at that moment, to quote the end of Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo," was this: "You must change your life."
I did, I am, and I'm still on this mission. It hasn't helped that since 2006, my work -- along with the work many of us do -- has gone increasingly virtual with the troublesome side effect of easy access to work at 3 a.m., on weekends, "vacations," or any other time the phone or laptop is within reach.
You cannot believe the amount of time I spend struggling with whether to add something to my calendar, then realize if I'm struggling this much, the answer is likely"no." I discern and evaluate and puzzle over what and how to do my work while studying the patterns and mapping out more down time, recovery stretches and breathing space in my color-coded Google calendar and in the paper planner. I also love much of my work, which makes editing things down tricky.
Sometimes I meditate, using an app with a timer, every day for a stretch even if I fall asleep or have to keep netting my butterfly mind back to the present until that timer rings. I pray, usually late at night on the deck for a few minutes, and step outside most morning for a tiny ritual of greeting the day. I think about what I've learned and am still integrating from many a therapy session and frequent conversations with dear friends. I also write and think about who or what is driving the workaholism bus that roared into my psyche so long ago.
Mostly this is a process of listening to my body and the body of time encompassing us each moment.
This discernment has led me to hold big spaces to leave town to write, mostly to the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow three or four times a year for five days of calendar-cleared-of-most-everything-else drafting, revision, and staring at trees, holiday lights, and the deer crossing the street. Writing for me is a way of arriving where I am in real and illuminated time, even if what's lit from within is sadness, angst, anger, disappointment, fear, or confusion.
Writing is my primary spiritual practice, which is why, on this early day of the Jewish new year (Happy 5785!), I'm observing Rosh Hashana by writing this to you and also to me. Right now on the porch, I'm telling my maniac-at-times mind to pause and take in the air, so generous and sweet on yet another new year, new afternoon, new moment. Although I'm not so adept at living here, at least I know where home is and I visit often.
You are an inspiration, Caryn.