Reading Time: 6 Mins
This past week I hit my three-month anniversary in my new role after being out of work for fourteen months after being with a company for eighteen years.
And I am loving it.
The people, the work itself, the ability to draw on my previous experience and the empowerment to bring new ideas to the table have all been amazing.
The “but” you are sensing is coming has nothing to do with the job itself.
The “but” has everything to do with the time I have left outside of the job itself and how difficult it has been lately to carve it up equitably for every other place I am needed.
How do we do it all? How can we be the dad, the husband, the good friend, the shoulder, the writer, the worker, the brother and give everybody the best of us while still showing up for ultimately the most important person in our lives, ourselves?
I know the short answer is that we can’t, so maybe the better question is why do we kick ourselves so hard when we fail?
During the pandemic, the lack of work brought everything into such clear perspective. I was fortunate enough to have been given a package that left me comfortable for a decent amount of time, and with that need stripped away the most important thing I learned was that the only thing that really mattered was to be present.
I started to worry less about the person I had to be for someone else tomorrow, or who I was for someone else yesterday, and started caring more about who I needed to be in the moment, for the person I was with, even if I was alone and that just meant showing up for myself.
Why do I feel that has changed now that I am back, happily employed and chasing the almighty dollar again?
This morning our daughter is at her mother’s place and my wife is enjoying a well-deserved sleep in and I find myself, for the first time in the last three months, with a few minutes alone to be IDLE alone.
Now, this idleness comes after several hours already this morning managing life admin. There were the new health benefits to sign up for, bills that needed paying, personal emails that needed clearing, dishes that needed doing, websites that needed updating… I woke up with nothing that really needed to be done this morning but still got done because I wanted to make sure I could be more present later today and tomorrow when I have plans to go out and be with other people.
And that’s it… I think I’ve just hit it… that is where my brain is taking me…
I am continuously preparing to be present.
I think that if I just do that one more thing, then when it comes time to be present I won’t be thinking of it.
The reason we kick ourselves so hard when we fail is because we are racing to check off a to-do list that is continuously repopulating itself.
We will never be ALL DONE.
This does not mean we need to give up and not even bother trying, but it does mean that when you have a minute to be idle and alone, let yourself be idle and alone.
We had a wonderful holiday and there was plenty of time to be idle in between Christmas and New Years as we consciously made no plans, but there is a difference between being idle together and being idle alone.
Idle together is a different sort of cozy and happy and the give and take of energy is healthy and uplifting.
Idle alone – aka “me time” – is something I know I need to carve more time out for. Is it irony that I’m saying I need to plan for it even though my whole point a minute ago is that I shouldn’t be planning to be present?
At least I’m self-aware enough right now to realize I still don’t fully embrace my own thought.
We saw family over the holidays and it was truly excellent. I’ve been thinking a lot about family lately, about my family, our family history. In a quiet moment or two I’ll jot a few thoughts down in a notepad that would be worth writing down one day more fully.
One of the #vss365 prompts on twitter caught me right off guard in December.
The word was simple enough, one of the first words we all learn: “tree”.
Usually when I set out in the morning to respond to a writing prompt I start with all of the most obvious uses of the word and then try to write something that does not fall on that list.
But the morning of the “tree” prompt I was hit so viscerally with a memory that it actually made my eyes tear up.
We hold hands around the willow tree and spread my aunt’s ashes. This place where we play now means so much more.
Up the hill and in the house Nan watches TV.
We haven’t told her about my aunt’s suicide because she’ll forget and we don’t want to have to repeat it.#vss365 #tree
— Lee Zanello (@_LimaZulu) December 17, 2022
In the quiet moments since, I’ve been retracing my family history since this event and have come to the conclusion that this was a pivotal turning point in our family history. This was the point that you see on many a timeline where, after a long period of sustained inactivity, there is an event that then leads into another, then another, and they all combine together as a blip on the line and everything that comes after has been changed forever.
I’m still living with these ideas in thought only, but if I can give myself into being more present when I’m alone, I can see them taking shape on the page in the near future.
My hair is shorter now.
Man, when I was unemployed, I grew it long. I was writing. I was living that artist life.
I cut it before I started my new role, then two weeks later we had an in-person event, my first impression for so many people, and so I cut it a bit shorter.
A month later that length was getting a bit scraggly so I went and neatened it up. It got a titch shorter.
I’m working downtown again so I went to a barber I hadn’t seen in years. I left the girl in the hipster shop on a cool stretch of street who had been looking after my long mane while unemployed and was now back in the core, where the barbers knew the meaning of time in and around the lunch hour.
Before our company holiday party I went back to that same downtown barber and it got a little shorter still.
It doesn’t need to get any shorter.
Why am I saying all of this?
Because my mind is wandering, which is the whole purpose of these woolgathering posts to begin with, and I think it’s neat to see a physical representation on the outside of me showing the gradual return to my pre-pandemic mindset where I was putting myself last and everyone else first.
Not saying I’m going to grow my hair long again; I have no need to look for a physical manifestation proving that my mindset has shifted.
I will say this though: the next time I find myself alone, I might just run my fingers through my hair and use that as a sign to give myself permission to be idle.