It's been a little over a month now since I have re-connected to my hometown groove and the pace of mid sized city life in Austin. Going to my workshop feels like a favorite old pair of well worn jeans and though it was a bit stressful in the beginning getting re-grounded here, I must say things are better than ever. I have been guilty of being rushed and ungrounded over the past couple of years in my shop, feeling a little to overwhelmed and busy to make small and sometimes larger adjustments that I know will be better for the flow of the work space as well improve some aspect of production or just the general use of the shop.
This type of refusal to fix what isn’t serving me well is pretty typical. It seems to be a mixture of procrastination and denial both of which have a connection to some fear lying underneath. I wrote a lot about fear in a recent post and so though don’t mean to harp, it is something that is at the core of so much and it seems worthy of discussion, especially in this particular context.
Yeah it was just very apparent to me after my return from Colorado that there was some maintenance, cleaning and sensible rearrangement that needed to happen. I think one of the reasons I was able to see this so clearly was because of the rest, renewal and the change of scenery the summer had afforded me. I think its so easy to get in a space where though I know I need to repair that tool, sharpen those knives, clean out that cluttered storage space or whatever it is that greatly improves things, I instead have an internal voice that says push past that thought, we don’t have time for that, there are more important things to do. Its a short sighted focus on achieving some goal that lies in the not too distant future such as getting a project out the door or a run of product to completion. It strikes me that, as with my last blog post, this issue not only relates to fear but also to being present or the refusal to being so in this case. Whenever I notice there is a problem with a system in my space, instead of being present with that fact and dealing with it in the present moment, I allow fear to put it off. This is really most unfortunate and honestly just sad when I really think about it. I say this because what typically happens when I allow observed dysfunction in my life to persist, is it usually tends to breed even more dysfunction which then creates, you guessed it, more fear. It’s such a self perpetuating cycle that can sometimes be hard to see when you’re embroiled in all that there is to manage in life. If I’m not taking care of myself by eating well and getting rest or connections with others, it only seems to make the above scenario more likely and or hard to be aware of.
Heading into my busiest time of the year, what I often refer to as the vortex, it’s more important than ever to notice this stuff and by writing about it here hopefully it helps me sink it deeper into my neural pathways so it just becomes part of the circuitry. Like most things of this nature, though I receive the most direct benefit, it ultimately trickles out into my life and hopefully adds to the bigger picture. Here’s to making a pretty one.