~ God told me to be an artist, week 53, 54 & 55.
Friday 12th January, 2024.
I'm back!! Christmas is never actually that relaxing now is it? Of course it's fun and we all eat and drink a bit too much [which is my favourite bit], but I always feel a bit wrecked when returning to my office.
This year was no exception.
I. Was. [and still am]. Knackered.
The tiredness was overwhelmingly big this year.
I felt something else too in these early January days, a heaviness. One that lasted. I thought maybe it would shift, but the second week of January rolled around and there I still was...heavy. I get it, a little blues in the aftermath of December. January 2nd,3rd, maybe even 4th as well, but 8th. Still feeling wiped out on January 8th?!
Unusually long to feel this way, for me at least.
It's been a weight I could not describe. Complex. Physical, mental, spiritual. It brought waves of astonishing silence but was somehow also deafening. It sort of blocked everything out whilst inviting the world in. A symphony of contradiction, a piggybacking gremlin that I simply couldn't shift.
I wondered what it was all about because for some weird reason it all felt so cluttered in my mind and wading through the enormity of it just didn't feel possible.
I noticed online creators from all over the world were asking, 'are we all okay?', 'what's up with the 2024 melancholy?'. And it hit me, the last few years and the current state of the world is just too much. Then add in any personal situations and that's it, your brain and heart just simply cannot hold it all, let alone process it.
To me it seems we're all in a state of overflow, but not the good kind. If you imagine a pipe bursting in the basement, a huge bust with water spraying everywhere. Picture yourself trying to stop the flow of water with your hands, and the more you try, the worse the waves seems to become. In other words the water's force is much greater than your ability to stop it.
And it just keeps building.
That's the kind of overflow I'm talking about. Powerful and unceasing. Relentless and cruel.
Unstoppable.
Unbearable.
Exhausting.
I think this is just what it's like to exist in the world today, exhausting. With no clear end in sight as to how to make the water stop rushing in.
To stop the world rushing in.
Our collective and individual experiences of pain are just too much and somehow we still expect ourselves to keep pushing through. To maintain the speeds we thought we left in 2019, pre-pandemic. But here we are, right bac, living with all the noise that we swore to reduce.
Crazy expectations and overbooked rushing are back in full force, and our world has more conflict, bloodshed and unbelievable pain than ever before and somehow we demand the cogs and wheels to keep moving.
How can we? Everything is sore.
Every fragment of our world is aching and we are tired.
We're confused, lonely, scared.
So what do we do?
I've found myself asking that question most mornings in the shower. Speaking aloud to anyone that will listen.
What should I do?
It was January 11th [yesterday] when I finally realised two things I can do.
Breathe through and simplify everything.
I know these aren't new concepts. But they're new to me. Well at least new in the sense that I don't do them intentionally I don't think. Not in a way that they are prioritised over everything else.
I met a wonderful lady when I was in Miami earlier this year and she told me the benefits she had experienced by simplifying some of the decisions and activities within her life. I've always been such a constant creative thinker and planner. Squeezing every inch of my time and energy into producing or thinking about producing. And as much as I've worked hard on healing from perfectionism and making more time for rest, there is still so much noise I tolerate in my my life, mind and existence that I simply don't have the space for anymore. Especially not if I want to have empathy and attention to give willingly and purposefully to others.
This is the year of simplification not multiplication.
I'll say it again. This is the year of simplification not multiplication!
I don't know about you but I have such a skill in making things complicated or convoluted. In addressing and working on my perfectionism I have begun to understand the roots of this behaviour and have been finding ways to disrupt it and now I think I'm just at the gates of the next phase.
Simplification. Intentionally, realistically, in a format I will actually be able to tolerate and maybe even enjoy.
The goal being that if I'm looking at less, I'm looking better. And if I'm looking better, I'm looking outside of myself as well as inside. I'm able to see more, notice the detail, take it all in.
I don't assume simplifying will be easy, but I think it's all I can do to make some space in this world that has me [and many of us] drowning in all its information, pain and communal destruction.
I want to show up for others and myself better and I think instead of having a list of 1000 resolutions I need just this. More simplicity.
It's a space maker, not one that seeks to fill itself with more, but to hold space for pause, nothingness and breathing. To interrupt the constant stream of everything that hurdles towards me.
A simplicity that reminds me that I am in the privileged position of even being able to think about living life this way, that turns my head towards those for whom simplicity is so very far from reality.
I want to feel the things that break God's heart and have the space in mine to spend time praying for them.
It's a bit of an oxymoron to increase something that inherently decreases, but that's what it is. More of the thing to make my life contain less.
I had such big and convoluted plans for 2024, and I just feel, deep in my gut, soul and spirit that I need to simplify them. So I'm going to listen to that whisper inside.
More simplicity.
Let's see where this goes.
See you next week, Cath x
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