Taking a Year To Be
I sat next to my mom on the beach and considered how similar we were in regards to career drive and ambition. It was Mother’s Day, and I was five days post-surgery. We were sitting on the seawall because I wouldn’t make it up and down the stairs to the sand. Technically I wasn’t supposed to even be walking yet, but I needed to get out of the apartment.
I buried my feet in the sand and thought about what she was suggesting. “All I’m saying, Holly,” she said, “is that you might want to take it a little easy. Maybe you just slow down this year. Don’t make any big changes. Don’t move, don’t change jobs, don’t start any companies, don’t take on anything extra besides work. Just be for a while.”
Who wouldn’t want to be told to do less, I wondered. Who wouldn’t want the opportunity to be lazy? And there it was. Right there. Lazy. Kicking ass at a full-time professional job, being in a wonderful committed relationship, writing two blogs, and founding a professional organization is lazy? I’ve always pushed myself to be more, better, faster. If I wasn’t the only person doing it, I’d better be the youngest person doing it. If younger people were doing it, I was doing more.
I’ve been teetering back and forth on whether or not the women in my family have bodies that are just not equipped to handle stress, or if we put an extraordinary amount of stress on ourselves which affects our bodies. Two of my aunts have battled cancer, breast and brain. My mother was emitted to the E.R. with chest pains for the first time at 42. The pre-cancerous cells my surgery and biopsy had revealed were most likely the result of stress, my doctor warned me in her office.
I had my first nervous breakdown as a high school junior. I was working part-time, volunteering in an at-risk school, going to school full-time, taking 4 Advanced Placement courses, and taking a night class at the local college. I crumpled like a ball in the living room when my mom scolded me over the laundry. It didn’t really slow me down though. By my senior year I was going to the local college full-time in place of high school classes, with the same extracurricular schedule. Who was I if not all those things – a star student, an impressive application/ resume, a good employee, a girl on the make?
So maybe that’s why I wasn’t surprised when my doctor eyed my chart after the second round of biopsies and said that the past three months of low-stress living hadn’t made a difference. Hadn’t I spent most of those three months stressing out about how to maintain my immense checklist of “low-stress” things to do? Wasn’t it only the last few weeks where I let myself go to whatever the results were, left it in Something Larger’s hands?
One painful, frightening surgery later (which I had um, postponed by a month so I could launch a professional organization), I sat next to my equally driven mother and took her words of advice. She knew. She was still pushing and climbing at 50. “It’s always there,” she said of ambition. “It’ll be there in a year.”
Who am I if not a ladder-climbing employee, a twenty-something entrepreneur, a moonlighting freelancer, The Person in Town Who Knows About That, a woman on the make?
I guess I’m a woman taking it easy.
Tempering my ambition and drive is something I’ve got to figure out in my life, otherwise this thing, this cancer is just going to keep coming up. And the risks are just too great to ignore.
And while I made up my mind on the beach that day, it wasn’t until today I had to act on it. I turned down a $500/mo. freelance gig. And it was in a type of work that I love and have wanted to do more of. I even initially agreed, but backed out after a long talk with my boyfriend and lots of prayerful contemplation this weekend. It was probably one of the hardest things, besides the surgery, I’ve had to do this year.
My greatest fear in giving up this year to maintaining the life I already have is that I will miss out on something, some opportunity, some chance, some big life-changing event. Then I realize that I just went through the life-changing event. I came head-to-head with so many fears over the six months I endured biopsies, waiting periods, immune system boosters, and surgery. In the end, if I don’t learn how to slow down and enjoy what I’ve built, I’ll miss out on so much more.
I'm glad you're okay! We miss you.
Being less "over productive" does not equal lazy.
e⋅piph⋅a⋅ny /ɪˈpɪfəni/ [i-pif-uh-nee]
–noun, plural -nies.
- a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
- a literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight.
Holly, thanks for the transparent post. I've been noticing a lot of Gen Y women that are like you. So driven, smart, ambitious…but getting tired as well. I think you are destined to do great things, you just don't have to do them all at once. I hope this comment doesn't get lost in translation.
Yay! I'm glad you've decided to be "lazy" the rest of the year. You deserve to JUST BE! Plus, you make me look like a slacker. Whew! I can quit my seconds job now
As always thanks for sharing and I can relate, trust. And as someone whose mother and close mentor both floated the same idea, (taking it easy for the next year or so) I have to ask you what I asked myself when processing a year to just be…
Are you equating your value, your worthiness, your general kickassness to being busy? And what is your first gut reaction when you see empty calendar space? (Full disclosure: My answers: Sometimes. And "Squeee, all this free time I can fill with STUFF TO DO").
Overall, this transition from overbooked to overeasy has really been a lovely lesson in grace.
Rock on girl, rock on.
I was just thinking about you! I'm glad to read that the surgery was a success and that you are taking your health as seriously as you have taken the rest of your life.
Good luck to you. Sometimes, love, it's not quantity that counts, but QUALITY. You don't need to do everything…pick those FEW things that will make you happiest, do those things and left everything else out. Mom (again) is right. Everything else will still be around when you are ready to pick them up again.
What a great post, Holly. Just being is often much harder than being busy. Wishing you good health and a clear space for yourself.
When you were little did you ever stare up at the sky and spin and spin til you couldn't spin your little body anymore. The world was so fun and fast and beautiful while you were spinning, but it completely messes with your head and when you stop you can't regain your balance quickly enough. Congratulations on learning to stop, the spinning is exhilarating and exhausting all at once.
Bravo Holly.
I've been so sick recently that I haven't written a word on my blog in 6 weeks, and I initially thought I'd take just a week off from writing.
I haven't socialised in weeks because I'm so tired.
I'm also about to take a couple of weeks off from my freelancing as a Producer, because I have to stop.
It's tough to stop, it really is.
There are so many things I want to be getting on with, so many ideas that need flesh on their bones and projects that I want to get underway.
But I've been very deliberate in stripping away the labels – blogger, coach, mentor, business-owner, etc – stripping away all the false pressures that come from being all of those things and just being Steve.
I guess it's hard when you fit into the 'Gen-Y' label that you have to feel like you're keeping up with your peers or what you expect of yourself. Be sure to realise that all of those expectations have been put together by you, nobody else.
You owe it to yourself to be gentle to yourself, so reset those expectancies in line with that gentle, caring, nurturing side of you.
Get out of your head and into your body and soul.
read half asleep in frog pajamas by tom robbins. its good stuff.
Holly, don't get yourself killed. Seriously.
I thought that was interesting what you said about a body not being able to handle stress. Some people are built for daily stress, I think, and mine definitely isn't. At the risk of sounding conceited, my body is like a high performance vehicle. It breaks down all the time, but when finely tuned and maintained, it goes really fast and is lots of fun to drive. What I'm definitely NOT built to do is work like a diesel truck. That type of daily load tears me apart.
I am realizing anew how this affects me…not so much me (I gave up the tenure-track hunt for something much lower-key), but the BF.
Every summer, his boss takes a one month vacation and leaves him to do EVERYTHING. Last year he got a kidney stone. This year it is binge drinking (yesterday I drove around until 12:30 in the morning trying to find him because he was blacked out and not answering his phone).
We are trying to find a way to transition him out of his current position while he is still sane and healthy, yet still be able to handle his debt. It's not all it's cracked up to be, the high-paced life.
Blog to come.
Holly, don’t get yourself killed. Seriously. <br /><br />I thought that was interesting what you said about a body not being able to handle stress. Some people are built for daily stress, I think, and mine definitely isn’t. At the risk of sounding conceited, my body is like a high performance vehicle. It breaks down all the time, but when finely tuned and maintained, it goes really fast and is lots of fun to drive. What I’m definitely NOT built to do is work like a diesel truck. That type of daily load tears me apart.
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