SUMMER OVERWHELM & WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.........
A few ideas in case these weeks feel like a crescendo & a retreat in Portugal to full stop the summer
‘I wonder if you can pause
-just for a moment-
the emergency of your life
and step out
into the quiet of the world.’
From the Poem Worker Bees by James A Pearson
I should be annoyed at this sudden temperature drop and the misty rain outside today - being high summer and all - but there is something still so beautiful about it all at this time of year. The uninhibited growth. The littering of rose petals everywhere. Everything with a momentum now of its own and one that needs no outside help, from the sun or otherwise. All that wholesale energy, which this day is offering just some momentary respite from, or so it feels. And so I need.
There is a crescendo like quality to these weeks that immediately follow the solstice. It’s as though all of the summer and its requests are concentrated into a period hallmarked by a frivolity but also an intensity that can- if you aren’t careful- take your breath away. There are moments when I wonder if it couldn’t be spread out a little more evenly across the year. Or why everyone seems to want everything to be right now? But then so do I. The intensity is part and parcel of it all. And fuels this feeling of ascension; of more and more, of higher and higher. We may as well ride it out. There will be plenty of time, soon, to drop. There always is.
But it can be easy too, to find ourselves in the moment in a state that feels a lot like overwhelm. My last couple of weeks have started that way; me mentally computing what I have to do and feeling the list build in my body, like a tropical storm. Each time it has happened I have told my husband as much. I have begun a Monday morning with the lament that despite these long days, and perhaps because of them, I simply have too much to do. I say that the thought of it all alone is overwhelming me. Which is the truth of overwhelm, that it lives so often in our thinking.
His answer, both times has been, ‘Bird by bird. Just take it bird by bird’.
This phrase has become a go to in our house, a mantra of sorts, in the face of anything that feels too much. It is the standard answer to anyone who is expressing that anticipatory defeat. A reassurance not just that they can do it, but also how they might.
The phrase is borrowed from the title of Anne Lamott’s book, ‘Bird by Bird’, a wonderful book on writing that I recommend to all writers and then also everyone else too. If you haven’t read it then do; it contains so much specific to creativity but also general to life.
In the book Lamott tells the story of her brother as a ten year old, who had got to the end of one of their long summer holidays and was facing the prospect of an imminent return to school. Only now a day away away and typical of most children, he hadn’t finished the huge project on birds that he had been set for the three long months that had just gone by. He was, she said ‘ at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”’.
It is the sum of things that overwhelms us, not the singularity. And yet the truth is, we can only ever do one thing at a time. When faced with a list that seems beyond you, see it as exactly what it is; a running order of what needs done simply one by one. Instead of thinking ahead to the middle or the seemingly impossible end of the tasks at hand, we can only ever start at the beginning and just go from there. And then step by step- bird by bird- we do each thing in turn.
It can sometimes mean needing to wake up earlier, and often stay up a little later, but it also isn’t worth losing sleep over. The sooner I begin, the sooner the overwhelm starts to fade beneath the necessary traction. And most things, in the end, get done.
It can help to avoid anything that is surplus to requirements in patches like this. That doesn’t mean rest or sleep or exercise or meeting up with a friend who needs counsel. Or a party. Those remain essential. Easier and more necessary to drop are the genuinely negotiables that so often consume bigger shares than they should; the thinking before doing, the relentless news, the scrolling through social media.
Stay task focussed rather than time focussed. Clock watching and trying to squeeze things into seemingly shrinking hours just adds to the rising panic. Some things takes more time than you think. Other things, and usually more things, take less.
Ask yourself the question, does it really matter? And then when the answer is yes, ask yourself again. I often find that having too much to do means I am a touch late for something - cue rising panic the whole way in the car- only to discover that missing the first ten minutes of something that I am usually on time for makes absolutely no difference at all. Or that the person I am meeting is similarly struggling to keep up and is not just ten minutes late too, but relieved that they aren’t the only one. Or that people understand. All too often our nervous systems react as though things are a life and death that they absolutely aren’t anywhere close to being. If necessary, let yourself off the hook.
And every now and then, in the midst of it all, stop defiantly. Have a cup of tea and sit in the garden with it, looking up at the trees. Or pause and take a few deep breaths. Or run a bath and let everything wait until the next day. You are the master of your lists and not the other way around. Stopping, purposefully and deliberately, like a child that is holding on to the bannister in an act of wanton refusal, can be a helpful signal to the world- outer and inner- that you refuse to succumb to the pace of its clock. And that doing so is highly unlikely to matter.
If anyone wants to stop even more defiantly than that, then I have two spaces left on my Portugal retreat which runs for four nights from Monday 30th September to Friday 4th October. Only 30 minutes from Lisbon and in the heart of the Ribatejo plains, the venue Terra Quinta is the brainchild of a French couple whose aesthetic sensibility is inspired and who have built a dedicated retreat space on five hectares of land. The rooms are simply but absolutely beautifully decorated, the gardens are spacious and glorious and there are spaces dedicated to indoor and outdoor yoga. As well as twice daily yoga there will be the option to ride, walk and even do a ceramics class. Or simply lie by the beautoful pool and soak up the last of the summer.
I find reterats at that time of year the perfect way to prepare for the tip into the winter.
If its soemthing that interests you then do email me for the brochure or to save you a space. nicolecroft@me.com
“Stopping, purposefully and deliberately, like a child that is holding on to the bannister in an act of wanton refusal, can be a helpful signal to the world- outer and inner- that you refuse to succumb to the pace of its clock.” - beautifully written & great reminder (and expression) at the crescendo!