The week is drawing to a close. The dog is, this time, asleep, and Hot Fuzz is going full force in the background. More than a little distracted -not only but the string of murders as white noise- but the business of the week. More specifically, the second week of Made in Bristol. We've done (carbon literacy and first aid) training, had welcome drinks, and the new term of Young Vic started. Now the above for me (especially the meeting new people part) would usually have given me a sense of pressure, a need for perfectionism and a sense of impending doom. For some reason, though, I'm feeling absolutely fine.
Not an inflated sense of success, but a gentle sense of peacefulness; content to let the days spill open into whatever way they may, as varied as they have been. This is not to say I don't feel an awareness for improvement and hope for the future; for example, I haven't really helped with drama workshops in this setting before so I have an eye on what I want to do better next time. But for some reason, these things feel managable.
I wonder if everyone working within careers they love go through peaks and troughs in this way. Or even people with jobs they don't love. Maybe this is just a part of life- the natural seasons that we pass through with little we can actually control of what happens in those different periods.
I don't know, though. We haven't got control over the world and all its seasons, we have control over our actions, what we do with our time. It does well to consider what we do. I've made a recent effort to actually boundary off time for relaxation, that and having morning and evening routines. I saw an Instagram video the other day talking about people who had jobs that demanded a lot of extroversion and social time. That this creates an energy that a person must then channel into something else.
I do feel that- the importance of returning to a resting state. Without that, we don’t leave ourselves open to receiving those new exciting experiences that flicker around the corners.
But that’s life isn’t it? It’s bright and constant- it can be overwhelming. There is something so freeing about finding time to step away from it; even when it can feel counterintuitive, even if it’s our favourite thing in the world. Because absence makes the heart grow, and we are only able to fully digest our experiences when we are resting. Commitment to ourselves and our own wellbeing becomes a duty to the very things that we love, a tribute to those things and what we can offer. There is no better way to honour it than to honour ourselves.