Albeit working 20 hours a week and taking some classes here and there at Duke now with a semester graduate class planned for the fall...... I am applying the "yama" of "tapas" to maintain a depth of engagement in the working world.
I have finally, after 27 years, realized that placing my effort on the balance instead of flowing with societies riptide pulling me out far into the sea. Being an amphibian might just be the key to a sustainable healthier and happier life. When I do feel the pull, instead of fighting the current, I'll just glide effortlessly over to the side until the urge or pressure passes.
Not making much sense.... let me jump back six months to my very unhealthy, busy aquatic life..... (read more)
In the past 6 months, I went from having no absolute tasks that I had to complete to being a working woman with a pet and garden to tend to along with other tasks of everyday life. This was of course the plan after my 80 hour average work weeks last fall had driven my health - physical and psychological in a beaten pulp. It took about 6 months of what for me is harder than working 80 hours a week: not working. Or, rather, disciplining myself -as if it were my job- to place my health first.
Six months or what seems like six years later, I find myself perhaps hip deep into the working life pool. Taking the steps in the shallow end I find myself firmly back into the pool of the life of work. Gradually I have added back in commitments to my life: first a garden to tend to, then a cat, and now an actual research job.
I have taken several routes into and out immersing myself into the body of water for which so much of society is almost completely submerged. In the past five years of my illness, I've watched solemnly dangling my legs into the water as I set on the side of the pool and pined to rejoin the habitual way of living a mostly amphibian if not aquatic life. Whether assigned by the doctor to rest and rejuvenate or thrown upon the shore by the tumultuous waves of a work-life that was unsustainable, during these break periods I found myself a fish on dry land....
--What do I do if I am not working or in school?
-- What is this thing they call leisure? ..........as I only know what it means to stopping for a breath between swim intervals...a necessary rest over the weekend or an evening so that I can begin again with equal fervor.
-- How do I pass the time if my time is not tied to concrete tasks and a sense of meaning that their completion brings to my life?
This time around it has been a different break from the working whirlpool. Practicing skillful actions, projects bounded comfortably in time and activity, the familiarity and significance of a sense of purpose life, I realized did not have to be inherently tied to an official work or school commitment. Rather, I have the choice of how to spend my days and have worked to cultivate a set of non-"work" activities that promote health rather than compromise it and learned a schedule that was inside the boundaries of extreme.
AND ALAS, I'VE COME TO ENJOY IT! KERRY THE AMPHIBIAN.....!
For someone who has been called "Type A", a "pusher", "driven", "achievement-oriented", and could not be more "J" in the Myer's Briggs typology, I find that I have in the past months:
1- Found activities other than work, school and running that make my life meaningful.
**(see main 3 below)
(as additional tasks in my life, of course my family and friends remain highly important to me)
2- I have challenged the 100% discipline and commitment, exploring and enjoying different areas along the spectrum of effort.
3- My habits have been actively reconditioned through, ironically, the "practice" or perhaps "disciplined" act of letting go. Letting go of what? Striving. Perfectionism. A mentality of busy= success.
4- In it's place, with the green light to re-enter the water and instead of transforming into an aquatic creature and jumping head first into the deep end of the busy busy working world, I am cautiously hanging out at the shallow end. What six months ago was a life so foreign, one without stress and with free time to do as I please, has become habitual. AND, I believe much more healthy.
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**Namely - gardening, art and having a cat. (read more on these)...
-I am watching seeds planted 3 months ago blooming into flowers including a sunflower bud chest high; the slow practice of collecting rocks at meaningful places in town to border my garden areas;
- I attend weekly meetings with my art cooperative stemming from an Artscenter class on Altered books. I make books or alter old books into mixed media art using collage, water color, acrylic, journaling, photography, etc. I recently made a book left at the Wrightsville beach "mailbox" for individuals prompting them to draw or write a self or soul portrait. I am working on a journal for Carrboro-ites to be placed inside my wooden unicorn on the path behind my house.
- I have acquired a "special" cat named Snowflake. He is about 9 months old and has some health problems but has become a loving and caring companion. Seeing him wait for me on the steps when I get home at night and petting him (requisite task in order for him to eat) while he has dinner...brings me a joy that I had never understood in other's descriptions of pet ownership
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