You're Not Lazy. You're Fallow.

Or...I Planned to Write a Novel. I Watched Stranger Things.

We’ve been traveling since last November. October in The Bahamas, December in Argentina, Peru, and New York, January and February in Ortigia. I am incredibly lucky to have these opportunities to go on adventures, visit family, and gather my friends together in different parts of the world. Travel feeds my soul, and my list wouldn’t be the same without it. But as I wrote in my last post, there comes a point when you start yearning for home. I was at that point maybe a month ago.

I spent hours daydreaming about how much I would get done when I got home. I would create a partnership to gift the Heroine’s Salon, I would restart my journal prompt essay writing on Substack, I would give my friend who is starting her own business hours of my time in consulting, I would learn how to write short stories, I would get back to my Mastermind groups that I have been neglecting, and most of all, I would start writing the novel that I have put on the back burner since I finished my Ph.D.

What have I done?

• An initial strategy call, and transfer strategy documentation for the Heroine’s Salon.

• A few sessions and some written strategy for my friend who is starting her business.

• Watched an entire season of “Love is Blind.”

• Watched an entire season and a half of “Stranger Things.”

• Watched whatever TV series my husband puts on at 9:00 pm

• Read fiction specifically chosen for its lack of brainpower required (think rom com and chick lit) so I won’t name it here in case that was taken as an insult (none meant. I write my own brainless rom coms).

• Attended 3 live football matches.

With the exclusion of the first two would I call any of this productive? No. I would not. Would I call it creative? No. I would not. Would I call it useful? Well... I’m trying to.

Yesterday and today, I woke to a completely blank calendar day page. There was nothing I “had” to do. The entire day stretched before me in hours of juicy, abundant minutes with which I could do anything I wanted. And what did I do with that time yesterday? Nothing.

So, I was writing my morning pages this morning and I wrote.

“I looked forward to all those hours. I had an incredible feeling of opportunity bursting out of me, and I wasted them all.”

Then, since I have a habit of chiding myself when I get too bossy, I asked myself what I meant by wasted.

Throughout my life, I have trained myself, or been trained, to treat time like a resource (thanks Patriarchy-you’ve done it again!). Every minute available should be extracted from, converted into output, and justified by productivity. So when a wide-open day is calling to us, smiling and waving as we reach for our phones and open our calendar on waking (bad habit), and we don’t do anything with it, the inner accountant starts screaming: “You’re wasting it.” Which, as you can see, is exactly what my inner mean girl did.

We are taught that time should be exchanged for value, and value can only be these things: X, X, X, and X. (Here’s a use for all that useless 8th-grade algebra, you know how to substitute for X. Madlib all over that shit.) My mean girl, who I’ve just discovered is also an accountant, lets me know what my X’s are by not-so-subtly screaming at me,

“What did you make today?”

“How were you productive?”

“How did you help someone?”

“Do you need to make sure you’ve done enough so that Y is not angry with you (yes, she went there)?”

“What. Did. You. Accomplish.....Loser.”

But, this morning I told my mean girl to piss off for a while while I thought this over, and here’s what I came up with... what if the feeling of that open day, that swelling of joy you get from knowing that you can do anything you want, is the value? What if the relief of potential without obligation is the thing you have created? There is such joy in the simple knowledge that no one needs anything from you, that you could do anything, and that you don’t have to choose.

Perhaps that feeling, of abundance, of spaciousness, of being at home in your own life, is not the precondition for creating value. It is the value.

Maybe that’s why I was looking forward to coming home. Travel comes with obligations to see things, do things, and share things. There is abundance and spaciousness, sure, but no one can feel good about binging a season and a half of Stranger Things while hunkered down in an expensive, waterfront Sicilian villa.

In the Midlife Heroine’s Dictionary, we call this a fallow period. Seasons of strategic rest where you don’t produce, perform, or push. Let’s not call it laziness or depression, because that’s not what it is. It’s the necessary pause that allows for future growth. I’m not doing nothing. I’m being fallow. There’s a difference.

See, my mean girl might be an accountant, but let’s face it, she’s a pretty crappy one. She’s tallying the wrong totals and totally screwing up the formulas in Excel.

The mean girl has the accounting wrong. The relief of potential without obligation is not the precondition for a good day, it is the good day.

Now excuse me, I’m off to watch the new episode of MAFS Australia.

JOURNAL PROMPT:

When was the last time you had a wide-open day with nothing you HAD to do? What did you do with it, and what did your inner accountant say? Write out her questions. Then ask yourself: whose accounting system is that, anyway?