A thing I’ve known about myself for a long time is that I am a limited resource.
I love to do lists, categorizing things, and thinking about process, so I’ve got a solid working theory on how to do stuff. A lot of people look at my life – real or social media – and are baffled by how much I do. Because it is a lot! I write entire novels and query them. (STILL no responses – am I fucking invisible?) I knit sweaters. I bake sourdough. I go to the gym and run. I sew, draw, garden, and cook. I read over a book a week. Plus I have three kids, a partner, a cat, and a house.
I’m an enneagram devotée: I’m a 7. Sevens are, depending on who you talk to, gourmands, hedonists, thrill-seekers, party animals, or shallow, flighty, pain avoiders. I really hate those descriptors. Sevens do struggle to feel their feelings, not because we’re selfish, but because the well is so deep we’re not sure we can come up. Sevens often have attachment trauma and seek new stimuli in order to survive, because if we tune into the pain we’ll know that we’ve been abandoned and nobody loves us. But if you are a seven’s best friend, you know you’re loved. I like to think of a well-integrated seven as what Madeleine L’Engle called a Namer; someone who brings people out and helps them know who they are.
Being a seven means that I have to do all this stuff. It is not optional for me. If I am not doing a ton of different things, I will drown.
But, as I said at the start, I’m still a limited resource. If I do too many things I collapse. So I have categories, and I make sure I always have something going on in each category to keep busy, but I oscillate between options to keep from burning out. Some things are more all-encompassing than others, like writing a book. If I’m writing, I can’t sew. I don’t keep the house very clean. But now, since I’ve put writing on the back burner for a while, all this space has opened up and I’m reading voraciously. I finished five books in a week. I’m doing a bit of sewing. But I know that even if I want to, I shouldn’t start baking, or take up calligraphy, or work on drawing, unless I want to give up the things that have moved into prominence. It’s a balancing act.
I’ve also noticed that Twitter ruins my creative brain. Just demolishes it. I’ve learned a lot on there, and I’ve curated my feed to be interesting and challenging, but it also means that it’s intense and stressful whenever stuff happens, and stuff is always happening. I want to know what’s going on and what new awful thing is going to kill us, but I am a more grounded person without it. I can’t figure out how to get that information without being derailed by anxiety. For now, I’m taking a breather, and spending some time recuperating through creativity.
Oh, and cleaning up barf, because parenting is a joy at all times. No matter how much I tweak my other columns, the mom category always asserts itself in invigorating ways.