Collisions of to-dos and time
Musings on omitting and summer
Road trips. Cookouts. Camps. Clubs. Far away vacations. Visiting family. Hosting dinner parties. Attending events. Keeping the yard in tip top shape. Remodeling the house. Paving the driveway. Redoing the landscaping. Leveling up in business. Maintaining a huge garden. Residing the garage. Going boating, hiking, camping, biking at least X number of times. Generating a great work of art or finishing a book draft. Canning 86 pints of tomatoes. Extra math and reading for the kids. Healthy homemade meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yoga or meditation five mornings a week. Date night. Girls night. Play dates. Back to school shopping. Maintaining an online presence. Scheduling and keeping appointments. And so on.
There are a lot of things I want to do this summer, a lot of things I could do this summer, a lot of things I feel like I should do this summer. It’s tempting to pack every minute. Maybe you can relate. It can be tricky to discern where to put your energy when the season shouts “now’s your chance, you only live once, the weather’s good so do it now, make sure you (or your children) are getting ahead” in various forms. Time is of the essence. The summer clock is ticking.
I’ve just started reading Jenny Odell’s latest book called “Saving Time: Discovering Life Beyond the Clock” and early on she writes, ““Simply as a gap in the known, doubt can be the emergency exit that leads somewhere else.”
I propose we go into summer with plenty of doubt around what we’re led to believe summer needs to look like. That we take the emergency exit toward doing things differently. That we omit what isn’t ours, and exist in, as Odell says, “restlessness and change that runs through all things.”
You don’t have to do all the things this summer. In fact, I’m going to go as far as saying you should consider doing less than you think you should.1
Do the things you truly want to do, is what I’m saying. The things that fill you up with aliveness, the things that make you remember what it feels like to be fully present in your body, in your place, with your people, in your life. Sometimes this means planting a huge garden or maintaining the yard or hosting a dinner party or vacationing in a far off land. Sometimes it means leveling up in something or putting in the work where the work is necessary. But don’t do things just because you think you should, or the things that deplete more than they fill, or the things that are photogenic but not actually fun or nourishing for you, or helpful to anyone else.
There is so much life beyond the shoulds, the clock, and the illusion of keeping up. Walk away from the notion that you have to keep a certain pace, or do certain things, or optimize….anything. The only pace you have to keep is the one that works in your life– because when you find that pace you are fully equipped to add to the healing of the world.2
I’ll leave you with one last quote from Saving Time: “Would it be possible, not to save and spend time, but to garden it—by saving, inventing, and stewarding different rhythms of life?”
Gardening time sounds like the way to go. Plant seeds, thin what’s not necessary, nourish, tend. Let’s reinvent how we interact with the season, and see if the rhythm created by doing so helps us, and the world, to heal just a little bit more.
Event news:
Those in the Brookings, South Dakota area, mark your calendars for an evening reading and book signing at McCrory Gardens on Friday evening, July 7th. It’s a delightful time to visit the gardens with so much in full bloom! There will be light refreshments, I’ll read some while you bask in the blooms, and we’ll allow space for questions/discussion. I hope to see you there! 6:30-8pm.
Except for going outside – when in doubt, go outside more than you think you should–this can just be in your front yard or on the deck, no big wilderness trip required.
Of course this is oversimplified, because big societal issues such as privilege and class play in to how much an individual can feasibly choose to remove. For some, the “pace that works for your life” is a pace that they wouldn’t choose if there were more viable options.