getting things done needn’t be the measure of us. any moment that we refuse to judge ourselves by the values of the profit-motive, totting up achievements versus our sins against productivity, is a moment that we step out of the extraction economy and begin to co-create something remarkably different. as fleeting as these moments may be, of feeling we are enough, not here to be improved — nor that time must be seized, not wasted, and itself extracted from – just affirming this to each other is a shift. we can read all the books* that affirm that the great letting-go is a form of future-activism; or, that it is nothing of the sort and we need not prove we are napping or doing nice things for ourselves and the earth either, we can just be without reckoning with just being. part of unplugging from the extractive mindset is to stop accounting. what a sticky thing it is, judging, proving our worth.
nevertheless, there are the things at the end of the day, perhaps far less than i think, which feel like the really important bits to show up for. what i find, on the days that feel really fluent (ah, another judgement) is that losing oneself/finding oneself in the moment is a way of being that i am increasingly fond of. i call it pottering.
pottering in itself is improvisational, to see before me what wants doing and to do it, not off a list, not out of discipline or pressure but led by a state of flow that really does sweep the porch off as the rain beats down, then notice how wonderfully full the buckets at the downspout are and step into wellies and jacket, broom in hand, hurl some water down the mucky step like a child making streams, scrub at the path til it is pleasingly, though no doubt temporarily, clear, then realise a while later that several tidying and mending and tending sorts things have been done that one had been resisting and that the time has at once paused and flown in gratifying busyness-idleness.
in support of this sort of physical meditation, and because my usual intensity of family life has dwindled temporarily (homeschoolers do graduate, eventually, though it feels surprising, and may go off into the world; and even the youngest ones do keep growing taller and more apt to go on Important Adventures) leaving me to carry off, not delegate, many fundamentals, like morning and evening chores, so i have begun to make this time my own. probably this is also a particularly wintry response, as there is a spaciousness now that will be squeezed out by the intensity of baby plants and baby animals in the coming seasons. i rest in it, though it looks nothing like rest. here is what it looks like:
in my morning state, still a little blurry from the dreaming world and from my scribbling over tea after i stretch middling age out of my bones a little, i think to myself, hmmmm. i know i shall be trudging from the duckhouse to the henhouse to the goosehouse, then up to the barn to see the goats beside the studio, and back again to the farmhouse by way of the potager and wood pile. and i will think, flat file, or, hand drill, or folding saw, or all three. then i might fetch them – luckily my past-self is growing more attentive to collecting tools in their home more often than not, so my future-self can be more present — on the way to my boots and coat.
then, in another of those stolen morning moments when no one really wants me yet, i might cut that new screen door on the barn where the catch would not move freely, and screw in a loose latch while i’m about it, then get rather absorbed in swapping the dutch doors that never were quite right these five years yet never seemed a priority and certainly are not now — but priority is not the rule of this moment, no, it is simple-pleasures-in-tending that are leading me along. and maybe while i gather eggs, it seems a fine time for that swollen cedar shake to be filed down, though it is raining on my face while i’m having a go, and ah, when the nestbox drops closed freely, it’s rather good, isn’t it?
then i might stand and admire the freshly scrubbed steps, and the rooster’s fine new iridescent feathers, and that bit of board i knocked in along the plum-tree flower bed that is still holding in mulch several months later and yes, feel industrious and worthy and at service, but mostly just as if i have been, for a time, wholly present to the day.
*/four thousand weeks/, oliver burkeman, a favourite as are his many podcast interviews
* /pause, rest, be,/ octavia raheem, have you read it yet? i want to. her instagram is excellent.
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