My Year of Shmita: June Update

June!

What an odd month. The end of the school year and a month of transitions bookended by a week away from the fray (restful highlight), and an intensive week of my-child-has-pneumonia-solo-parenting (restful low point)!

*Here is a post I wrote about announcing my Year of Shmita and my January, February , March, April, and May recaps.

MONTHLY NOTES

MAJOR THEMES

• Oxygen. What gives me oxygen. How does that differ from fuel/”food” in terms of mental wellness? How can I carve out more oxygen-giving activities in my life?
• As much and as long as it takes. I thought a lot about my new little mantra of As much as I need for as long as it takes. Friends, it is so, so discouraging how tired I can feel even after concentrated bouts of rest. But I need to acknowledge I have been in the middle of several stressful situations for a protracted amount of time. And it’s going to take time – maybe a lot of time – to process, recover, and heal from some life events. It feels uncomfortable to sit with that, but in my good moments I’m gentle and kind with myself and just repeat: As much as I need for as long as it takes.
• No. For years, when the pleading and questioning gets too much, I’ve often told the kids: No is a complete sentence. Why am I good about reinforcing that with my children, but not with myself? I needed to take a complete break from volunteering and optional events that drain me. I had listed playdates in my notes, but that is a delicate balance. In many ways, hosting playdates makes my life EASIER since my kids are entertained, happy, and filling their social buckets. But, for now at least, my default to a lot of activities needs to be NO!
• Seasons. Kendra Adachi is a huge fan of discussing the seasonality of life and I want to delve more into this. One would think seasonality would matter less in a year of Shmita since you’re not planting and harvesting according to the regular rhythms of an agricultural cycle. But seasons inform what is happening underneath the fallow ground. Seasons mark the passage of time. And, the fact remains that I am not an acre of soil. I am a human! And human seasons are complex…
• Exercise. I really, really struggle with exercise when I’m struggling with mental health. I know this is a vicious cycle since exercise is important for mood regulation and energy. In June I took the entire month off recording workouts. So when I went for my only run in June (ha!), I didn’t record the distance using my Apple Watch. Every walk? Not recorded. It felt…odd and in July I started tracking my exercise again because I do find it inspiring and helpful to keep record of my workouts. But it broke a years-long chain of recording every walk and run and then dumping that data into a spreadsheet, and it felt like a valuable streak to break in pursuit of rest.
• Doing nothing! This was a wonderful addition to my Year of Shmita. I don’t manage to do this daily, but when I do…it’s lovely. My favourite approach is plunking myself in the hammock with no phone or book and just staring up through the leaves toward the sky. A few times I’ve had micronaps. Thanks again to Ally for reminding me that doing nothing is an important part of being human.
• Care vs. control. I like to plan and organize. But I typically plan and organize in an attempt to control my situation. (Not only do I do this to myself, sadly, I do this with those I love as well.) I need to care for myself and others – NOT control myself and others. The action may stay the same, but the reason behind it would be different and that distinction is an important one. For example, I put a lot of effort into planning a full summer for my kids to try to control a difficult situation, but wouldn’t it have felt lighter and more pleasant if I had done it because I care about them having fun? Care was always there as part of my rationale, but control/fear tended to be the dominating emotion and driving force.
• Daily list. Okay I failed at this, but loved the idea of having a daily checklist of: 1) Food (eating something daily I thoroughly enjoy), 2) Order (tidying some space), 3) Fun (reading a book, watching a show I like, listening to an upbeat song), 4) Nothing (doing absolutely nothing for at least a few minutes every day).
• Egypt. Pulling this back to the Biblical narrative and Sabbath, one of the ways God paved the way for a Sabbath was by providing a double portion of manna for Israelites on the eve of the Sabbath. This allowed them to avoid collecting and preparing food – a necessary chore 6 days a week for survival. Not only did God provide manna in the desert for physical sustenance, but He provided manna as a reminder of His salvation in the past. He wanted Israelites to remember that He had rescued them out of Egypt. One day I had a lightening bolt moment: He has brought me out of many Egypt’s before and how quickly I forget! Classifying hard seasons in the past as “Egypt’s” has been a surprisingly effective exercise.

BOOKS I READ THAT RELATE TO SABBATH

• The Bible.
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. (5/5 stars). I enjoyed this book even more the second time I read through it. Such a relevant take on time management; this is a resource I’ll come back to over and over again.

QUOTES

• The Bible. 2 Chronicles 15:15 – And all Judah rejoiced over the oath for they had sworn with all their heart and had sought Him with their whole desire and He was found by them and the LORD gave them rest all around.

Four Thousand Weeks – Oliver Burkeman

• What makes it unbearable is your mistaken belief that it can be cured. Charlotte Joko Beck [Some situations and problems are just…unsolveable.]
• But the other reason we might not realize some everyday process is broken is that it isn’t broken to begin with – and that the inconvenience involved, which might look like brokenness from the outside, in fact embodies something essentially human.
• [We value things because we know there aren’t an infinite number of them – e.g. summer vacations, Christmases.]
• [Bright sadness, stubborn gladness, sober joy – all sayings to describe the experiences of people who face major challenges like a cancer diagnosis and realize, as Burkeman puts it, “a more honest relationship with time.”]
• The overarching point is that what we think of as “distractions” aren’t the ultimate cause of our being distracted. They’re just the places we go to to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation.
• Worry, at its core, is the repetitious experience of a mind attempting to generate a feeling of security about the future, failing, then trying again and again and again – as if the very effort of worrying might somehow help forestall disaster. The fuel behind worry, in other words, is the internal demand to know, in advance, that things will turn out fine…[Yes. This EXACTLY.]
• Our efforts to influence the future aren’t the problem. The problem – the source of all the anxiety – is the need that we feel, from our vantage point here in the present moment, to be able to know that those efforts will prove successful. [Um…yes!]
• So a surprisingly effective antidote to anxiety can be to simply realize that this demand for reassurance from the future is one that will definitely never be satisfied – no matter how much you plan or fret, or how much extra time you leave to get to the airport. You can’t know that things will turn out all right. The struggle for certainty is an intrinsically hopeless one – which means you have permission to stop engaging in it.
• “a plan is just a thought.” Joseph Goldstein
• …all a plan is – all it could every possibly be – is a present-moment statement of intent. It’s an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.