Savour it

On By Rebecca BurtonIn anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, life, meditation, moments of beauty, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, the freelance life, the sky, workLeave a comment

Other people’s words about … moments of beauty

Her head nested in spindly weeds [as she lay down in the grass]; the sky glowed preternaturally blue through the slats. As her breathing slowed, she noted a bee crawling along a blade of grass above her head. She counted its stripes, amazed to see them juxtaposed with the stripes of sky. The bee’s were a warning, the sky’s a promise she could not yet fathom, and for a moment everything seemed connected, aching beauty and imminent danger, the fragility of the bee and the scalded roof of her mouth, the transcendent savour of [the stolen loaf of freshly baked] bread and the fact that she was literally lying in a ditch.

From ‘Tess of the Road’
by Rachel Hartman

I love this passage, in which the protagonist of Rachel Hartman’s novel, Tess, feels utterly present in a single moment of her life: feels herself watching the moment as it unfolds. Tess’s experience of this moment, her sense of being present in it, is what a meditation teacher might call an experience of mindfulness. And yet the description is beautiful rather than didactic, descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Stripes in the sky (1)

Hartman’s words are, I think, a description of the practice of mindfulness at its best. Mindfulness, to me, is not about mantras or breathing or (heaven forbid!) colouring-in books. Instead, and far more simply, it is about slowing down, about looking around, about noticing the world around you. It is, most of all, about seeing.

Because the practice of mindfulness — this kind of mindfulness, anyway, which to me is the only kind that makes any practical or spiritual sense at all — is about stepping outside, into the living, breathing world, the one that exists beyond walls and ceilings and computers and cars. It’s about looking and seeing. And about being grateful for what you see.

Stripes in the sky (2)

This year has been a strange, uneasy year for me: a year of trying to make a living from freelancing, and then trying to readjust to a salaried living, working regular hours, meeting KPIs and targets. I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned throughout the year, and grateful most of all that I was able to seek out other opportunities when freelancing alone wasn’t enough to sustain me.

Still, at times this year, when things got hard, I felt myself becoming frighteningly disconnected from the things that usually matter most to me: those still, small moments like the one Hartman describes, those moments when you stop and breathe the world in, exactly as it. Call it fear that stole those moments away from me; call it loss; call it depression; call it change. Whatever it was, it shocked me. I felt that I had stepped away from the world, and I didn’t know how to step back in.

And yet here I am now, months down the track, and I’m still here, still breathing. I’m stepping back in.

Unrepentant

On By Rebecca BurtonIn anxiety, books, Chasing clouds, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, Other people's words about ..., Paths, Port Adelaide, reading, resilience, rituals, Running, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, the beach, walking2 Comments

Other people’s words about … life after therapy

It’s an odd sensation to be done with therapy, to believe it is no longer available to me as a recourse. I watch as people around me flow in and out of therapy, and as therapy flows in and out of them. I feel a familiar sense of alienation, and sometimes I’m also troubled by an obscure sense of uncleanliness, as if my resolution to abjure therapy were a perverse abstention from universally accepted hygienic practices — as if I’d taken a vow never to wash again. Therapy is an ablution, a Ganges in which everyone bathes.

From ‘Mockingbird Years’
by Emily Fox Gordon

There are two things I experimented with to excess in the years before I turned forty: restricting my eating and, like Emily Fox Gordon, consulting therapists.

So many different eating plans.

So many damn therapists!

I thought they would make me a better, healthier, happier person, but I was wrong on both counts.

Things that make me happy that don’t involve therapy or dieting (1):
A bunch of flowers planted in the dune, which I happened upon on a recent run

But in my early forties I came to a turning point, and now, nearing fifty, I know there’s no turning back. I am done with diets and therapists forever.

So here is my promise, to myself and to you: I will grow old therapy-free, no matter how unenlightened that may leave me.

And I will grow old (joyfully, unrepentantly) eating cake!

Things that make me happy that don’t involve therapy or dieting (2):
Views like this on my walk to work in the morning

Lately I’ve been reading about …

Say it loud, say it true

On By Rebecca BurtonIn a thought, Aldinga wetlands, anxiety, birds, blogging, books, depression, favourite quotes, health, home, hope, life, on writing, Other people's words about ..., Paths, Port Adelaide, reading, resilience, rural notes, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, the freelance life, trees, walking, work, writing2 Comments

Other people’s words about … writing

Dan sits at his desk [to write his book] and closes the door to the hall, to the world. Winter unfolds around the cottage, June to July, and time flutters to the ground like pages. Too few pages. Never enough.

From ‘The Breeding Season’
by Amanda Niehaus

A few weeks ago, right at the end of my first week in my new job, I spent a weekend with a group of women who are writers and artists, some of whom I’d known for many years, a couple of whom I’d never met before. We walked along the beach, and we talked, and we laughed, and we ate, and we drank gin and tonic. And then we parted ways again, some of us driving back along the winding coastal roads towards the city to a life made entirely of writing and drawing, some of us driving back to a life made partly of writing and partly of child-rearing or paid work outside of the home.

Lunch break view (1): Climbing the mast

The woman who had organised the weekend had planned it, loosely, as a writers’ retreat, and indeed some of the women — a couple of whom had strict deadlines to meet with their publishers — did write during the weekend. The rest of us sat outside around a table on the sun-drenched balcony, sharing stories of our writing: our latest work in progress, recent reviews, launches we’d attended, talks we’d given, and so on.

I say we and us, but the first-person pronoun sits queasily with me, because I haven’t published anything for ten years, and because I’ve been through periods in recent years where I’ve consciously stopped writing altogether and tried to move on to other things in my life. This year, during the early months of my freelance life, I started writing again, but the process has continued to feel tentative, precarious (that word again!), and filled with doubt and fear.

Lunch break view (2): Red and blue

And so I felt a little like an intruder at that sun-splashed table on the balcony overlooking the sea. Sure, I have stories to tell about writing and about the books I’ve written, but they’re stories anchored in the past, not the present. Mostly, then, I stayed silent, without contributing when the talk turned back to writing. I listened to the things my companions were discussing, the things they said they thought about as they wrote. And as I listened, I reflected — as I have so many times over the last year or two — that what stops me from writing these days (or, more accurately, what stops me from completing any of the writing I start these days) isn’t so much a lack of confidence in my writing as it is a lack of confidence in my self: who I am, where I fit in the world. What I experience. What I think. What I stand for. What I believe. What I feel.

What I want to say.

Lunch break view (3): Seagull companion

For me, writing has always been about having a voice. In essence, it’s about having a conversation on the page with my readers. And so, implicitly, it’s about feeling that I have the right to express myself, to speak up, to tell a story: my story. It makes sense, then, that in the last few years, as I’ve found it increasingly hard to talk aloud — in conversation, I mean, to family, to friends, to peers, to colleagues — about the way I experience the world, my world, I have also found it increasingly hard to write.

I don’t know whether I’ll ever write or publish another book again in my life, and I understand that, in the scheme of things, whether I do or not is probably neither here nor there. But I do know that in order to write again, I will have to learn to believe in my voice once more, and to be able to listen to myself somehow, and to manage to see myself not as an intruder but as someone who belongs in this world. Until I can do these things, I will keep letting those pages of mine — the actual pages and the metaphorical ones, the pages of time, the pages of my life — flutter, like Dan’s in the passage I’ve quoted above, to the ground.

Weekend view: under the arch

Sometimes when I write posts like this on my blog, they feel self-indulgent, self-referential, self-absorbed. And perhaps my posts are all of these things. But perhaps, too, there’s a reader out there somewhere, reading this post, who has felt (some of) the things I’m writing about today, and who hears her voice reflected back to her as she reads. I want you to know, reader out there, that you are not alone in this world. Your voice matters. Your short life matters. You matter.

So go on, say what you have to say: and say it loud, say it true. This world, this life, belongs to you, too.

Precarious

On By Rebecca BurtonIn anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, Lately I've been reading about, life, on writing, Other people's words about ..., out & about, Paths, Port Adelaide, reading, resilience, solace, South Australia, spring, staying humble, staying true, the freelance life, the sea, the sky, walking, work, writing3 Comments

Other people’s words about … fighting against entropy

Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy. Craziness scares us because we are creatures who long for structure and sense; we divide the interminable days into years, months, and weeks. We hope for ways to corral and control bad fortune, illness, unhappiness, discomfort, and death — all inevitable outcomes that we pretend are anything but. And still, the fight agains entropy seems wildly futile in the face of schizophrenia, which shirks reality in favour of its own internal logic.

From ‘The Collected Schizophrenias’
by Esmé Weijun Wang

It’s a strange experience returning to the salaried workforce after a period of time away from it. When I went freelance at the beginning of this year due to the closure of the Press for which I had worked as an in-house editor for the previous five years, I suspected that it would be difficult to make a sustainable living from a solely freelance income. And it was. I thought, at first, that it might just be a matter of making contacts, of building up a client base, of learning how to market myself: of learning, essentially, how to ‘hustle’. I thought at first, in other words, that it might just be a matter of time.

So I allowed time to pass as a freelancer, because I knew that I had to. And gradually, after enough time had passed, I came to understand that the passing of time would never be enough to change the precariousness of an income based solely on freelance work. I came to see that the gig economy, which relies on the work of freelancers and contractors like me (more about which, if you’re interested, you can read here), doesn’t just allow for precariousness: it depends on it. And I came to see that precariousness is not something I tolerate gladly.

I do not believe that precariousness is a synonym for freedom or flexibility, as proponents of the gig economy would have us believe. I believe that it is a synonym for anxiety. And anxiety is also something I don’t tolerate gladly.

So I have returned to a part-time salaried job, which I intend to combine with part-time freelance editing work, with an enormous sense of gratitude and relief. Though no job is ever truly permanent or secure, a salary brings with it, for as long as it lasts, certain things that are the antithesis of precariousness: regular hours, fortnightly pay, annual leave, sick leave, superannuation. Along with these financial benefits, a salaried office job, which is what my new job is, also brings with it a workplace outside of the home, and colleagues with whom one interacts every day. These things, too — which are, in essence, about belonging and community — contradict the concept and practice of precariousness. I am immensely grateful for them.

I took the first three photos in today’s post as I wandered the neighbourhood in my lunch break at my new job — a lunch break being yet another one of the ‘perks’ of a salaried office job. I’m working now in Port Adelaide, a suburb in the north-west of Adelaide which was once the heart of the marine industry of Adelaide. The wharves and docks of Port Adelaide are no longer busy in the industrial sense for which they were originally designed, so the streets I now stroll along during my lunch break are lined with abandoned warehouses and marine businesses. At the docks, dolphins swim beneath the bridge that spans the Port River, while trucks thunder overhead. The area has, on the one hand, a sense of history, beauty and purpose, and on the other hand, an air of loss, and decay, and death.

Craziness scares us because we are creatures who long for structure and sense, Esmé Weijun Wang writes in the passage I’ve quoted at the start of this post: we divide the interminable days into years, months, and weeks. She is writing about schizophrenia, and yet I’ve thought of her words frequently as I’ve wandered the streets of Port Adelaide. Because though it is true, now that I am working for a salary once more, that my feeling of precariousness has reduced, still, somehow, this fear remains. I still long for something that feels just out of reach: something that Wang describes as a way to corral and control bad fortune, illness, unhappiness, discomfort, and death, those things that, like precariousness, are, in the end, inevitable.

I took the fourth photo in this post, the photo below, last weekend, which I spent with a group of women in a holiday house in Carrickalinga, a coastal suburb south of Adelaide. The women I was with are all writers and artists. Some of them supplement the income they get from their art with a salaried or waged job; others exist solely on their freelance income. Each of these women is talented and successful in her own right, and each balances her sense of precariousness with a sense of purpose and joy and productivity in her chosen field of art.

I climbed a hill to take the photo you see here. I stood at the top of that hill and looked down at the world below me — the crumbling cliffs, the winding coastal road, the shining blue sea, the horizon at the edge of the ocean — and I felt the world expand around me, stretching out, out, out. The moment felt precarious, as the weekend had felt precarious, as the previous week — which was my first week in my new job — had felt precarious, as my freelance income had felt, and will always feel, precarious. As life feels precarious.

There was nothing I could do to remove the precariousness. All I could do was wonder at the view.

Lately I’ve been reading about …

Because we can

On By Rebecca BurtonIn Aldinga Beach, Aldinga Scrub, anxiety, Australian bush, books, Chasing clouds, depression, favourite quotes, flowers, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, native coastal vegetation, native flowers, nature, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, remnant scrub, resilience, rituals, Running, solace, South Australia, spring, staying humble, staying true, sunsets, Taperoo, the freelance life, What I talk about when I talk about running, work4 Comments

Other people’s words about … making myths

Women who run: women with disabilities, fat women, women who’ve recovered from physical injuries, trans women, migrant women, Indigenous women, depressed women, women with no time, women with no kids, women ladies of leisure, schoolgirls, retirees, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, queer women, straight women, slow women. Scrutinise any one of these categories and a set of stories that defy generalisation will emerge, stories that destabilise the big stupid myths that say women can’t run, that only certain kinds of women can run, that it’s too dangerous, that it’s unfeminine, that it’s a sign of trouble.

From ‘The Long Run’
by Catriona Menzies-Pike

Next week, I start a new job in a new workplace. It’s been nine months since I had a salaried job, and though I’ve enjoyed the challenge of working as a freelance editor — and though I don’t plan to stop freelance editing any time soon, despite my new job, because my new job is part-time and therefore will allow me to continue freelance editing on a similar part-time basis — I feel both relieved and blessed to be returning to the salaried work force. At forty-nine, I am willing to admit that job security and a regular income is important to me. I knew this when I began freelancing. I know it even more deeply now, nine months later.

Winter sunset

I took some of the photos that you see in today’s post over the last few weeks, while I was out walking or running around my local neighbourhood. Running for me isn’t so much about, as Catriona Menzies-Pike puts it in the passage I’ve quoted above, destabilis[ing] the big stupid myths that say women can’t run: it’s more about destabilising my own personal, stupid myths about myself, one of which, for many years, was that I wasn’t an athlete, I wasn’t strong, and I couldn’t run.

Deep blue sky

In fact, some of the stories I’ve told myself all my life are true. I’ll never be an athlete. I’ll never be strong, physically or mentally. But I do continue to run, and continuing to run continues to make me feel good.

Spring flowers in the Scrub

No matter how slowly I run some days — no matter how old or stiff or sad or achey I feel when I’m running — and no matter whether I have a stable, salaried income or an unstable, freelance income, I run. Not far, and not fast, it’s true.

Nonetheless.

I run, not just because it makes me feel good, but because I can.

Hole in the sky

Lately I’ve been reading about …

Take note

On By Rebecca BurtonIn Aldinga Scrub, anxiety, Australian bush, blogging, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, home, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, moments of beauty, native coastal vegetation, native flowers, nature, out & about, Paths, reading, remnant scrub, resilience, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, the freelance life, the sky, walking, What I love about ..., Winter, work2 Comments

Other people’s words about … gratitude

I am so glad to still be here. Every day, I do my best to see the colours. I take note. I breathe them in.

From ‘How it Feels to Float’
by Helena Fox

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, I know. I want you all to know that I have been thinking of you, and I have been thinking of posting. There just hasn’t been room inside my head to get to it.

The first groundsel flowers of the season
(Spring is coming)

But when I read Helena Fox’s words in the Acknowledgments section at the back of her wonderful novel for young adults, How it Feels to Float, I wanted to pass them on. Because no matter how crammed my head — my brain, my mind — feels at the moment, I, too, do my best to see the colours, to breathe them in.

Blue winter sky

The photographs in today’s post come from a walk I took in the scrub a few weeks back. I hadn’t wandered through the scrub for a while, and I haven’t made it back since, but those moments were precious. I am still breathing them in.

Last rays

Stuck

On By Rebecca BurtonIn a thought, anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, health, home, hope, life, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, solace, staying humble, staying true, the freelance life, the sky, Winter, workLeave a comment

Other people’s words about … working for yourself

After months of effort, I felt stuck. I had been trying hard to get some projects off the ground, but they kept getting knocked off course. I had managed to persuade a think tank to work with me on a big research project, but then the director of the think tank had been fired. I had been promised a retainer to do some work with a healthcare company, but then they looked at their budgets and changed their mind. I had been asked to apply for a couple of non-executive roles, and then failed even to get interviews. I was working nearly all the time, but after all my efforts, I was barely scraping a living as a jobbing hack.

For a while, in my thirties, I felt stuck in a job. I once told my boss that I was ‘bored out of my fucking mind’. I now want to shake that girl who got a regular pay cheque for doing something perfectly pleasant and tell her to grow up. But you can’t tell anyone how to feel. If you feel stuck, you feel stuck. And there aren’t all that many species on this planet that are at their best when they feel trapped.

From ‘The Art of Not Falling Apart’
by Christina Patterson

I picked up Christina Patterson’s book late last year, at one of those bargain-basement discount bookstores that dot Rundle Mall these days. In the book, Patterson tells the story of how she was made redundant from her job as a journalist and had to find work as a freelance journalist instead. Oddly enough, only a couple of days before walking into that bookstore, I’d learned that the press at which I worked as an editor was being closed due to budgetary constraints, and that I was about to lose my job.

It would be an understatement to say that I felt as though Patterson’s book had struck a chord with me.

Sky and trees (1)

Right now, six months down the track, I’m still at the very early stages of my freelance career, as Patterson was at the time she wrote her book. It feels too early to me now — too close, perhaps, too raw — to try to describe the journey I’m on in any detail, though I’ve touched on it in previous posts. Certainly, there are days when, like Patterson, I look back on my younger, salaried self and shake my head over all those times I claimed that I was ‘bored’, that I was ‘stuck’. And there are days when, again like Patterson, I feel stuck right here, right now, forever.

But to go into any further detail here — to dwell on the doubts, the negatives, the vicissitudes — would be tedious, I think. Or joyless. Or beside the point. Or all of the above. Besides, there are other things to focus on. There’s the world around me: the sea, the trees, the birds, the air. The sky. There’s always the sky.

From now on, I plan to spend more time looking up at the sky.

Sky and trees (2)

On that topic, if you want to join me in my sky-gazing, feel free to hop on over to my new Instagram account, twentyonewords_aboutthesky. I’ll be taking a photo of the sky each day and posting it there, as a reminder to myself — and to anyone else who wants to be reminded — to keep looking up.

After all, as Matt Haig says in Notes on a Nervous Planet, Look at the sky. (It’s amazing. It’s always amazing.).