I’m Struggling…

I’m struggling…

I’m struggling to keep up with the demands I've put on myself.

Most days im hunched in front of a computer. Doing things I love - raising money for an environmental non-profit (which also earns me my livelihood), creating content to plant seeds of consciousness in hearts and minds, engaging with online material for my much-loved course. Else, I’m meditating, listening to podcasts, reading, learning, being an activist or a deep ecologist….

However, they're still all things that are required of me. Tasks on a to-do list.
I would wake up on my days off with anxiety about all the things I still had to get done.

Knowing what I know, I would schedule rest and leisure into my calendar…but it never feels restful or leisurely when it’s stringently squeezed into a timetable.

This left little space for the more feminine (or yin) qualities - flow, play, joy, rest, connection, creativity, fun - to bloom.

When stuck entirely in the masculine (yang) - hustle, strive, achieve, push through - there exists an imbalance. And nothing truly nourishing can fruit.

Even though all my beloved tasks were fully aligned with my goals and rooted in flipping the system, I was still very much operating within the confines of the capitalistic narrative; beating to its very rigid drum.

I know that…
Rest is resistance
Space beckons creativity
Movement coaxes
Play is sacred medicine

But doing it, living it?

It’s hard. Its hard to shed these layers of conditioning, so deeply entrenched - in the psyche, the system, our behavioural patterns.

And it is not enough to know the answers, we must bring the knowledge through our body, to create a new, lived, felt understanding. New behaviours. New ways of being.

So that’s what’s been up with me.
Trying to learn to surrender.
Trying to learn to let go of the “should's”.
Trying to follow the seasons (it’s winter in Aus), to slow down and hibernate a bit.
Trying to remember myself as an alive being, not a machine.
Trying to remember that the “work” is not always done on a computer.

And, mostly, trying to stop using the word trying and start feeling like I’m actually doing. Even if that means doing nothing.