Wild Letters is a newsletter about self-exploration and building a right-fit life. Thank you for being here with me!
My dear reader.
First, a little announcement!
In early June I’ll be hosting a brand new workshop: How Much Money is Enough? for folks like me who call bullshit on capitalism’s relentless pursuit of “more more more.”
It’ll be a gentle two-day exploration of what enough looks like for each of us, particularly at the intersection of our money, our values, and our most joyful, right-fit lives.
If you think you might be interested in joining me for this offering you can add yourself to the waitlist right here, and then I’ll send you more info soon.
This question of “enoughness” has been coming up so often for me — not just in regard to money but in literally every area of my life — and over the weekend it showed up yet again, this time as an intense bout of productivity anxiety and the all-consuming feeling that I wasn’t getting nearly enough accomplished.
This particular type of panic continues to happen to me at least a few times each month, where despite doing what feels like all the ~work~ to unlearn the demands of hustle culture and the way it puts output-as-identity on a pedestal I still go through phases of suddenly being convinced that if only I were to try harder/work faster/download the right app/start drinking bullet coffee I’d finally be able to push my way to the end of the to-do list.
(The end of the to-do list!! As if that’s even a real thing!)
Because the truth (which I often try to avoid) is that there is always more to do. I regret to inform you that cleaning the toilet today doesn’t mean you’re done cleaning the toilet forever, and that scheduling our doctor’s appointments this week won’t free us from ever calling the doctor again. Completing a piece of writing only ever returns me to the blank page and to the next piece of writing and the next and the next.
We know this. I know this. So why does it sometimes feel so agonizing?
Which particular pot of gold do I think would be waiting for me if I could indeed reach the end of the to-do list rainbow? What am I actually fantasizing about when I imagine being “done” with “all the things” forevermore?
Later this week I’m headed out on my first backpacking trip of the year, with a plan to hike 65 more miles of the Appalachian Trail. (725 miles down, 1465 to go!)
The closer I get to this trip (and to the start of backpacking season more generally) the more excited I feel, not just for the singular joy of spending hours and days and weeks walking through the forest but also for the way that backpacking creates a complete and immediate cessation of all outside expectations. No one needs anything from me while I am backpacking — there is no assumption of my availability, just an autoresponder email and the choice to leave a message after the beep.
The intensity with which I crave this specific kind of freedom (from being needed, from having any responsibility at all beyond “walk from point A to point B, don’t die”) used to fill me with a quiet but unrelenting shame. I thought: Well surely there must be something wrong with me for wanting to leave my daily life, my beloveds, my everyday everything, just so I can hike alone for hundreds of miles instead? Isn’t that the opposite of being rooted, of being in deep community, of being interdependent with others and devoted to mutuality in all the ways I say I want?
Perhaps the most supportive question I’ve begun to ask myself lately is this one:
What if this were not a problem?
There is immediate relief that comes when I stop thinking of every single fucking part of my life as a problem that requires solving.
So the productivity anxiety has flared up again even though I “know better” by now. So what? What if this were not a problem? What if this anxiety is just one of many things that I experience sometimes, for no other reason than that the Over-Optimizing Ableist Life Hack Tech Bros have yet to relinquish their stubborn control over the part of my brain that they colonized in the early 2010s? If I stop thinking of this as a problem, if I stop trying to fix myself, I can instantly be free.
Similarly: so I crave big swaths of time to go on long walks in the woods, during which I revel in the fact that no one needs anything from me. So what? What if this were not a problem? Being in relationship with others and being part of community does not require constant presence and hyper-availability to the point of self-neglect, and in fact I care quite a lot about how everyone’s differing needs and desires when it comes to their alone time can be met while still being an integral part of the collective.
Partnership without self-abandonment is the only kind I’m interested in.
Back to the to-do list for a moment, which currently looks like this:
Buy new socks for hiking
Pause gym membership
Schedule home energy assessment
Get passport photo and mail renewal application
Tidy up the mess in the cellar
Decide on trees to buy for the small orchard
Build raised beds for herbal garden
Schedule next dog training session
And at the end of those eight tasks, what? What is it that I am waiting for, that I am withholding from myself until they are complete? Is crossing off the eighth task the magical time when I will finally believe that I deserve rest and play? What about the next eight things that will need to be done, and the next and the next?
There’s a quote I love, from Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, where he says:
“Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved ‘work-life balance,’ whatever that might be, and you certainly won’t get there by copying the ‘six things successful people do before 7:00 a.m.’ The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control—when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen. But you know what? That’s excellent news.”
It is excellent news! Because if the end of the to-do list will never come then I am free from acting as if it will — which to me means devoting myself to all the “less productive” things I want to do in the meantime, regardless of which tasks are still languishing on my list.
I can go sit in the yard and tilt my face up to the sun right now, not because the to-do list is complete but because it never will be.
**
More soon —
Nic
Something in the end of this made me think "needed not everything". Where needed might look like walking for hours by myself. Or cleaning the house. It might be taking a long lunch to go to yoga. Or working late to finish something up. What is it time for now? When what I compare myself to is everything, I will always come up short; when what I hold myself to is what's needed, I feel a sense of caring/being cared for. Where what it is I choose gets fuller, gets richer, gets (and gives) my wholeness.
That Oliver Burkeman quote 🎯