This morning I woke up
groggy and stumbling –
taking two tries
to turn off the light switch –
(5:30am is not a friendly hour
for star watchers and moon chasers,
but much-loved children have school
starting sometime during
those, my, unholy hours of the morning.)
and as I stumbled about
my brain kick started,
like an engine sputtering
and resisting turning over,
sending the things I’d need to do
before I could sleep again
marching through my mind,
and the familiar
worn-thin-stretched-tight
singing of a too tight cord
in the wind
rose from my nerves and tendons.
And then I stopped,
somewhere between
light switch and shoes,
and stopped my brain
from dragging my heart around.
I can come home
and go back to sleep.
Yes, there are things to be done,
yes, work needs to be done,
but if I come home
and sleep
just for a bit
I will get it done better…
and there I stopped myself
again.

No.
And no again,
when I came home
and lay down
and could not quite stop
thinking about
what I was not doing
and caught myself
trying to justify
resting
as a way to be more productive
as a way to ease the guilt
the learned guilt
of not falling into line
and lock step
of I Am My Work thinking.
Because I am not.
And so I gently wrapped
that high strung song
in tired arms
and whispered
this is more important.
Not because I will get more work done
not because I will be better
for someone or something else;
it is simply the most important.
Without me
there is nothing,
and that’s it.
The work will wait,
the lists will be there,
this is priority.

—

This is something
I grapple with on a regular basis.
In spirals.
This time,
there is a focus on
acceptance
after having
learned a bit more about myself
this past year.
I am usually the
harshest taskmaster
to myself,
and the cruelest critic.
I am realizing that
many of the expectations
I’ve been carrying around
have been unrealistic
and that I need to put them
down.
It will be work I do for years yet,
I suspect.
I suspect
I will be unlearning
and relearning
and unlearning
my whole life,
if I tell you the truth.
I think that’s a good thing.