Things from a week spent spinning the wheel
A hypothetical diary
Monday begins with the best intentions…
You have your to-do list, you’ve created colour-coded blocks in your calendar for different projects and tasks, and you start with the thing you really want to do.
Except, you haven’t finished some other things you thought you would do over the weekend, so you attend to those first.
The day gets away. You feel a bit itchy in the afternoon—why is it that even when the day is yours, it can be so hard to establish a rhythm? You remember what May Sarton said, “I am in a limbo that needs to be patterned from within.”
Tuesday, you start doing the thing you want…
Maybe it’s an artwork. A new business. A personal project. If you give it all your focus, maybe it will finally have a chance to take you in the direction you actually want to go.
You begin drafts, start the application, or spend some hours playing with the form.
But doubt sets in. You wonder whether it’s ever going to work. In a panic, you tell yourself to consider more safety nets. You can handle the packed schedule—perhaps even thrive with one.
Wednesday, you brainstorm all the things you can do…
Look for jobs in corporate. Learn a trade. Enrol in a course to teach English. Cold email businesses and offer various services. Work in a café.
Instead of feeling empowered by all the possibilities, you feel overwhelmed. In any scenario you ponder, you have either stability but no time, time but no stability.
You’re caught in the wheel familiar to any creative, freelancer, or human with desires. Round and round, desire or money, money or desire, not knowing which direction to pursue, so not really pursuing either.
Thursday, you feel exhausted…
Or maybe despondent. How are you meant to find a job when your CV doesn’t translate to the corporate world, or you don’t have the coffee-making experience to work in a café?
The mood shifts to indignation. But you’ve worn all the hats. You’ve built things from scratch. You’ve worked with scrappy and non-existent budgets. You have the skills and then some.
You go for a walk. You talk to a fellow creative, freelancer, or human with desires. You do what you need to stop the momentum of the wheel. You take a nap.
Friday, you see how you’ve been looking for a guarantee…
Sure, a full-time corporate job appears more stable, but the pursuit of it is just as uncertain—so in the meantime, why not pursue what you actually want?
Loss is an inherent part of creating anything. The point isn’t to know for certain whether it’s going to work—the point is to learn to navigate the uncertainty.
You will look back on this period and wonder why you spent it looking for guarantees instead of just doing the thing you wanted to do.
You might never get clarity about the best direction, but you can stop spinning the wheels of indecision and move ahead with something.
Saturday, it’s time for a pep talk…
You will breathe through the uncertainty and do the things you want to do. You will push on open doors. You will dismantle limiting beliefs. You allow yourself to receive. You will not worry because you cannot yet see the path. As Virginia Woolf said, “You will arrange whatever pieces come your way.”
Sunday, you take out a journal…
You sit by the water or maybe in a park or on a sunny balcony and set a timer for twenty minutes to write about what you really want for your life. No constraints, just let your hand move across the page as you ponder the person you want to be and what your day looks like in say a year, five years, ten years from now. Where are you? What’s on your bookshelf, or desk, or kitchen counter? Who are you talking to? What work are you doing? What have you already ticked off your list? What’s coming to you that you’re excited about?
Pause the wheel, and let it all in.
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