What A (Forest-Creature) Girl Wants

Right now the rain is coming down sleekly, and with purpose. Like long, straight hair. The kind that always looks clean and shiny and recently brushed and smells like green apples. I didn’t know it was going to rain today. Not that it matters. I’m inside, body hurting a little from a workout that, in my opinion, shouldn’t be something my obliques are screaming about two days later. But they are. And that’s all right. To be fair, it’s not like I pay my obliques that much attention. I had to Google “what are your waist muscles called” to even remember the word “oblique.” As it is, “oblique” doesn’t sound very much like a muscle; it seems like it ought to be filed in a particular category with words like opaque, and obscure, and possibly even obliterate.

At any rate. They’re screaming, and my abs have something to say as well, and if I push my hip a little too far to the right it does a thing that feels remarkably like uncoupling from the socket.

When we had a friend over for dinner a few weeks ago, she asked an important question: “What is bringing you delight lately?”

I didn’t feel like I had a totally satisfactory answer to that question. I knew of things that delighted me, but I hadn’t been participating in many of them. Certainly not during the work-week. And so I want to ask you: what is bringing you delight? I don’t mean ladybugs, chocolate croissants, the weekend, and birdsong, though those things count. I mean, what steps are you taking to deploy delight as an offensive tactic against apathy?

As a creative, enthusiastic, try-it-all person who has never found one single job she’d like to do forever, working an 8-5 has been a little bizarre for me. I’ve felt by turns trapped, bored, scared (of being trapped and bored), inspired, challenged, restless, and discouraged. But as “being a forest creature” (Andrew’s career-choice for me) is not on the table, I can’t just hop from job to job like a frog on so many lily-pads. I am not a special case that needs gentle handling. Lots of people work jobs that are are nothing more than useful employment to earn pay with which to satisfy expenses. But also, I’m not into the whole “failure to thrive” aesthetic, and I really don’t want to hate Mondays. I’d like to move with as much daily enjoyment as possible, and up until a few weeks ago I distinctly…wasn’t.

What changed? On a philosophical level: considering delight, and how I could dip into it. On a practical level: changing my routines and holding myself accountable for my own enjoyment of daily life, for my own sense of purpose in where I am and what I’m doing. It’s not like I haven’t tried to shift some habits before. It’s easy enough to do at the start of January, or maybe when my birthday rolls around. But I don’t find “because I should” to be much of a motivator to accomplish or change anything. “Because you should” has never made me inspired to try mouth-taping, for instance.

You know what (bizarrely) has worked for me? Admitting that I am someone who would like nothing less than to be a writer/dinner partiest/forest creature/children’s book illustrator/ceramicist/specialty food store owner/baker-but-only-once-a-month/flower-garden-grower/combination coffee-shop/book store runner (but only when I wanted to be). And as such, a traditional workplace setting is not my natural habitat.

Here’s an odd question: what do zoos do with creatures that are out of place, off their continent, in captivity, and therefore not part of their natural habitat? How do they keep those animals happy and healthy? They provide them with as much enrichment as possible, curate a special environment, and take specific care with their feeding and exercise. In short, they put some effort into creating conditions as similar to the wild as possible.

If I lost you after saying I thought of myself as a zoo creature, I get it. It’s a strange mental exercise - the kind Andrew doesn’t like to play at - and definitely something that might work only for my brain. But the underlying principle applies: define what “the wild” looks like for you, and get to work creating a type of those conditions within your reality. This, I feel, is how you get the delight back. This is how we avoid burnout, panic, and worshipping Saturday & Sunday as supreme beings with the week. Of course I’ll always have a special love for those days - when else are you free from commitments and expectations? - but as for the rest of it, life feels vastly improved. Here’s what has been working for me over the past several weeks.

I’ve been getting up at 6 AM (or earlier) - and no, lying in bed “a little longer” doesn’t count as “getting up” at six. What can feel like the worst choice of your life (climbing out of bed directly after the alarm rings) has become an important rhythm for me. It doesn’t matter when I go to bed, or whether or not I was awake for a random hour in the middle of the night. Getting up at the same time each weekday has helped me immensely. I know, I know. Sleep is good, we love sleep, we can’t do without sleep, etc., but I assure you that your body will adapt to the decision if you can push past the seduction offered by a feather duvet.

Once I get up, I don’t touch my phone for at least twenty minutes, usually longer. I let my brain rise to meet the day at its own pace, and mainly use this time to awaken my body and bones. I have to be at work at 8:00, so waking at six gives me time to set my day in motion the way I desire. Maybe it’s an everything shower/shave, or a few minutes to sit down with a cup of tea and my notebook to write. More often it’s enough time to do a workout on YouTube (I rise a little earlier if I’m headed to the gym), or go for a walk outside, then shower, dress, pack my lunch, and head out for my day. I cannot overstate how much my work headspace has changed since prioritizing myself and my real life. Morale shoots through the roof when my first meaningful act of the day is not punching in at the time-clock.

I’ve been moving my body whenever I think I have the slightest inclination - I am not somebody who ever exactly wants to work out. But if there is the vaguest thread of a notion that says “maybe I could,” I get to it right then and there. The silliest thing is that the benefits they speak of from having a movement practice? They’re all true. I sleep better, have more sustained energy, am less physically and mentally destroyed by my desk job, and have a more buoyant mood if I’ve set aside time to move that day. Everyone has a different body, but for me these benefits are displayed most prominently if I workout in the morning. I do not get the same lift to my day if I work out after 5 PM. Maybe you do? I’ve set a few fun, non-scale goals for myself like “do the 8 flights of steps up to the office without becoming breathless” and “strengthen my core to prepare for eventual pregnancy.” I’ve also been enjoying picking out different ways to move each day. I particularly love YouTube workouts because you can find so many that cater to exactly how you’re feeling that day, and they’re free. Want a silly dance workout? An ab workout? A yoga practice taught by someone with a plus size body like yours? It’s all there, and you can easily find options that don’t require equipment, which is a huge plus for those of us who don’t have a home gym set up. Another great one is to convince a friend to meet up for a walk. In fact, walking with friends is one of my favorite friend-dates if the weather is good. I am in a constant state of wishing I lived in a walkable community and could get my exercise built-in. Walking is my favorite.

I’m valuing pockets of time - whether it’s some stretches shoved into a spare twelve minutes, or a half-hour I could be reading my book while sitting in a waiting room, I’m getting creative with the pockets and seeing what I can plant and grow there. Usually I’d spend those bits of time scrolling or being absorbed in my own life, but when I can see them as an opportunity to free-write, read, or strengthen my arms, my day feels richer. It’s not about “productivity-maxing,” it’s about realizing that for most of us, the time we have is there, but it’s not in easily-scheduled and sizable blocks. Getting better at catching those spare ten minutes and spending them…I don’t know…beholding? It’s changed the game for me. I like how pleasurable life is when I’m pottering among the gaps, not just leaping to the next task.

Lunch is adventure time! - I absolutely have to give credit for this concept to the hundreds of strangers who took the time to comment on a silly TikTok video I made, asking for advice about enriching a 9-5 life. Most of the advice came down to this: your lunch hour doesn’t have to be lunch. It can be an exercise in free will. And boy is that a life-changing concept! I have the type of job where I can eat at my desk while working, so although I do sometimes use my lunch break for actual lunch, I choose to do so in a thoughtful way, and pick a pretty place. Other times I clock exactly how far I can venture afield in order to do something silly and get back to work on time. Last Friday I managed to beat traffic, drive to a bowling alley, finish an entire game, and get back within an hour. Who goes bowling in the middle of a workday? People who realize their lunch break is recess. At the start of June I printed off a calendar and filled it in with fun little forays each lunch break. I love to look forward to the next day’s “enrichment activity” and have found it makes a huge difference in my morale! Today I’ll be going home to watch a favorite illustrator’s art vlog and have a matcha affogato made with homemade vanilla ice cream. Friday I might go thrifting. You can fit an awful lot into an hour if you really try.

Limiting how many evenings we spend on the couch - maybe it’s a married-without-kids thing, but because of our early bedtime and how much we enjoy our house, having a good lounge around the couch and watching something had become our go-to way to spend an evening. Now don’t get me wrong, we love a good lounge-y evening and a favorite TV show or movie. We are film people! But what I don’t love is how every single evening blended together, we weren’t having exceptionally meaningful experiences together, and we’d save anything remotely interesting to do for the weekend. The summer always brings a little bit more variety (and the fall/winter is admittedly a better time for a lot of that cozy stuff), but we had really fallen into a pattern of doing nothing but hanging out during the weeknight evenings. Something was missing. After some discussion, we determined that we’d try to spend at least 3 evenings per week doing something non-lounge-y and see how it affected us. What I didn’t expect is how much swapping out the couch-sitting for more life-giving things would give me more energy and inspiration for my week.

I had been jealously guarding my mid-week evenings, worried that any amount of plans would contribute to the already overwhelming sense of exhaustion I felt after a day at work. It turns out that my exhaustion from work being my entire life five days straight, and a social prescription actually reversed this particular brand of entropy. We have both been enjoying this new pattern to our days, and I hope that we can continue on with it, even outside of summer. For now we’re finding free concerts, trivia nights, long park trails, inviting friends over, investing in mentor/discipleship relationships, FaceTiming people we miss, going bowling, cooking for loved ones, and sundry other fulfilling ways to go about our weeks. And it makes the evenings we do spend at home truly restful.

Keeping appointments with myself - Just like I’m not a flake with friends and commitments, I’ve gently stopped flaking out on myself. If I want to spend some time reading instead of starting an episode of Wrexham, I do so. If I want to improve something about our nutrition (big into balancing our plates with lots of fiber, not just protein), I look up new recipe and actually make them. I’ve stopped pretending like I don’t have time to put on body-lotion. I’ve started being better about taking my supplements and medication, and doing stretches for plantar fasciitis. If I want to not rush into work (I hate rushing) I leave a little earlier. If I want fresh sheets, I put them on the bed now - not later! As a class-A procrastinator, these small shifts are completely within my power to make, but feel like a new world. You mean I don’t have to put “call my doctor” on a to-do list and agonize over it for 7-9 business days before actually calling? (But I will forever agonize about calling law offices at work to tell them their mistakes - this will never change.)

Is my life completely organized, well-appointed, and professionally managed? Of course not. Have I made efforts to stop complaining and begin to appreciate the things on offer from my current life? Things like lunch breaks, proximity to home, growing friendships, a currently child-free dynamic, and the power of choice? Yes I have. And suddenly, what I do for work hardly matters at all. After all, my job takes a certain amount of hours per week, but I’m off-setting them with things that bring my delight and joy. There are humans I enjoy at work, that I can show up for and be light to. I can make a customer’s day better, perhaps (or at least get to laugh over the interaction after they leave). And off the clock, I’m taking the long way, saying yes to some things, savoring the quiet moments of just me and Andrew, and not worrying too much about what lies ahead. I think this summer is going to be really beautiful. It’s got fantastic bone-structure.

Love,

Rachel