Too Few Spoons
Root 44 - I'm a human being, not a human doing.
40 hours of work per week
6 hours of commute per week
exercise for an hour 3-4 times per week
make dinner three nights per week
contribute 60% of the housework
spend time with my husband
spend time with my child
make time for friends
make time for family outside the household
make time for myself, to relax
attend writing group
publish a post on my Substack
If reading this list caused a certain amount of panic to grip your throat, you too may be experiencing an excessive amount of business in your life.
I’ve heard this analogy: You wake up with a certain number of spoons each morning, and you have to decide how to allocate them. What to give your spoons to. Why spoons? I don’t know. But it constantly feels like I have too few spoons, given everything I’d like to get done.
The line that stuck with me the most from the book Complex PTSD is “I’m a human being, not a human doing.” I feel like, with all I’ve been trying to do of late, I’ve been a human doing. I’ve written out a list of all I want to accomplish for the day, then gone about my day checking items off until the day was over, gone to bed, and done that over again the next day. It’s exhausting. It makes me wonder what the point of it all is.
The publishing schedule I set up for myself on Substack started out as a helpful pressure. It got me to write more consistently than I was in the habit of doing, because I needed to get something down for the next post. I am glad that I set it up for myself; I’ve produced a not-insignificant amount of writing here.
But the pressure is no longer helpful. Things can change, and now whenever I think about my publishing schedule I get grumpy. I’ve recently written to The End on a few different projects, and now I mainly want to be editing and polishing those. I’ve also started writing a graphic novel, which isn’t yet in a format to be shared. Making sure to write posts for this Substack on top of the main writing I actually want to get done is too much. I have too few spoons for that.
The decision to get rid of my publishing schedule here instantly filled me with relief. I’m giving myself a break. Maybe at some point I’ll want to pick back up again, when I have something else that feels right to share consistently. But for now, I’ll only post as the muse hits me. I’m going to try to do less, and simply be.
As the story was told, the origin of the analogy took place in a restaurant. And the cart with all the tableware was at hand, so spoons were used as the example unit.
I hit the spoon wall a couple of years back. I had been borrowing tomorrow's spoons for so long, just to get through today, that I was months in hock. I'm still not finding the energy to actively do a whole lot of "fun" stuff, even if I want to. But, I understand that I'm catching up from all that spoon burning.
Things you do for pleasure should never be a source of that much anxiety. I'm glad you made a decision that de-stressed your life!