The Rules of Magic: Quiet the Noise

When we are far from the heart of this worldwide pandemic, and we have the distance we need to look back at this time with equanimity and perspective, I'm certain each of us will see how every one of us hit a melancholic slump. 

Mine crept up on me, and I didn't see it until I was well in its belly, staring at its raw walls wondering how I'd wandered so far down its gullet. This slump ate away at my healthy practices and creative rituals until it touched every aspect of my life, but I didn't see it until I'd written about it over and and over and over again in my morning pages.  

Where once I'd brainstorm ideas, thoughts for the day, and a laundry list of imaginative to-dos, my morning pages began to capture a repetitive cycle of unhappiness:

"I'm not happy."

"Everything feels hard."

"I'm not motivated."

My habits, too, had gone awry. I may have kept my morning pages ritual, but everything else -- including my studio time -- hit a wall. Instead of creating, I compulsively checked news stories multiple times a time (okay, let's be real, sometimes multiple times an hour), tracked covid statistics like they were the sole means through which I could live my life, and researched and acted on further anti-racist actions I could take in the USA while I live here. 

My connection to self and creativity felt broken, and what's worse, all the actions I took only made the disconnect worse. 

In June I wrote about my need to soften, and I'd taken steps in the right direction, but my unravelling hadn't stopped. 

After four months of pandemic, social upheaval, and crisis living, I needed a break, and another round of media deprivation alone wasn't going to cut it. 

So, for the entire month of July, I bowed out of ordinary life, cast aside every obligation I could, and swore I'd follow Whimsy wherever she wanted to lead me. 

I've never been in a position where I could take an entire month off. Usually my holiday time looked like the typical drought of two, maybe three weeks of vacation a year. 

Even with that time off, I seldom took it all at once; instead, I'd split my cherished days off into multiple vacations spanning my weekends in order to maximize my time away. Time off became yet another area of my life where I could try to do all the things.

Think tourism rather than leisure. Picture trying to tick sites off a list and doing rather than recovery, relaxation, and being.

Since developing a litany of chronic illnesses, I'm not able to do even half of what I once thought reasonable to complete before breakfast. Recovery and rest have become daily considerations (if you haven't heard of Spoon Theory, take a quick detour and read up), and with them I've had to learn the value of doing nothing. 

While my physical health may not have been in a flare, my mental health was turning into a dumpster fire, and I knew I needed to give myself space to heal. I needed a reset, and keeping my old habits wasn't going to get me there. 

I didn't know what would make me feel better, but I was starting to get a sense of what made me feel worse. With that in mind, I laid out two ground rules for myself:

1) No news or current event stories for a month. My consumption was out of control, and nothing I read actually left me better informed or able to act. 

2) All obligations off the table. If I was going to reset, that meant setting aside all the deadlines I'd created for myself and all those I could do away with. I even paused my weekly writing habit in order to really give myself space. I still had to walk my dogs every day, but whatever I could do without ended up on pause. 

I didn't want to go into the month-long hiatus with a structure, because that felt too much like obligations, but I did want to set an intention so I could be accountable to myself. How would I spend the next month? What would I like to do?

Without the press of external stressors, Whimsy jumped forward and said, "Follow me!"

So that's what I did. 

For the entire month of July, I would wake, do my morning pages, take care of the dogs, and the first moment I had to myself, Whimsy would tiptoe in and say, "What would you like to do today? The sky's the limit. We can do everything or nothing, and both are equally good ways to pass the time."

I spent those 30 days chasing after Whimsy, and I loved it. 

I worked on my 1/12 scale haunted dollhouse. I took one look at the plain white paint and decided a whole new palette was in order: violet, blue, and pink! I finally installed the windows that have been waiting for years and got the shingles put on. I pulled out my many years old notes on what, exactly, I had thought to do with each room, and now have a plan to see the most outrageous of them through. 

The Halloween quilt that languished in the sewing nook became the work of one day, and I sent it off for the long-arm stitching finish. 

I tried my hand at wood carving for the first time and built a monster trellis.

Not every day was perfect. I had obligations I couldn't avoid, like little Milton's weekly medical appointments, and a few unexpected must dos consumed the whole of my attention every once in a while (some of which were pure adrenaline delights: I received my first ever full manuscript request for one of my novels, and I spent three days with it to make sure it was all up to snuff before I delivered it to the agent -- keep your fingers crossed for me!). 

But every day I promised to follow Whimsy and for the most part, I did just that. 

And from the first day -- from July 1st -- my whole mood improved. I felt listened to, nurtured, loved, and supported -- and all because I created a space for recovery. If I hadn't known to quiet the noise, I'm sure my depressed mood would have continued and grown worse. 

Coming back to "real" life has been interesting. Having followed Whimsy so long, I'm not ready to give up her ways. More than that, I don't yet know how to reincorporate the daily news cycle back into my life in healthy ways (and thus I have not done so yet). But I have the stability and mental clarity now to move forward with intention and the right choices. I couldn't have done that while I was in that lackluster slump.

If you're feeling this way, I hope you carve out your own quiet time. Take a few hours, a whole day, a week -- any time at all -- and invite Whimsy into your world. If you sit with patience and listen closely, I'm sure she has all sorts of wild, soul-feeding ideas she wants to share with you.