I am going slow. Intentionally for the most part, but a bit out of necessity. These days I measure success by how much of my time qualifies as rest or leisure. I am doing my best to ignore the voice in my head that tells me to get back to work, to stop being so lazy. I no longer believe in laziness. At least not as a cause for admonishment.
It is rainy and cool and I am sitting in my writing shed for the first time in months. Once a cinder block room with a concrete floor and a single fluorescent light dangling from the ceiling, we converted the space into an office earlier this year. Drywall and a wood floor, recessed lighting, and a small window that looks out onto the yard so I can watch the birds come and go from the feeder as I work, have transformed the space. There is no heating, but the room is small enough that running a space heater for just a few minutes leaves me feeling cozy and comforted. Which is how I feel right now, drinking my coffee and enjoying a little piece of the last of the cider donuts.
At some point this year, I got away from the quiet task of closely observing my surroundings, and in doing so, my writing fell away too. So I am slowing down and getting back to watching the world around me, taking it all in without the expectation or obligation to regurgitate it in some fashion, to reflect on it and turn it into writing. I am trying to observe just for the sake of observation, for the interest and pleasure it brings. And if doing so inspires me to write, all the better, but if not, that is fine as well. I have decided not to push it, but to allow the words to come in their own way and time.
There is so much emphasis on producing in writing. Tracking submission stats and word counts. Racking up consecutive days of sitting down to work. I mention this without judgment—I do it too; it is part of the publication process. But when it starts to feel like too much, there is something quite wonderful in taking a step back from objective measurements of your writing efforts and letting it all go for a while. Who cares if I don’t publish anything more this year? Who cares if all I have to show for the time I spend in this converted shed is a list of disjointed thoughts and lines, stray observations that are eventually lost to time, never coalescing into a complete and finalized version of an initial idea? That’s okay because my focus for now is to return to a place of enjoyment in writing, free from expectation, untethered to any particular sense of achievement. Like I said, I am measuring success in different ways right now.
Four times in the brief period of writing these paragraphs, I’ve gotten up from my seat to go outside and shoo a squirrel away from the bird feeder. It keeps returning. The birds flit and flutter around the squirrel, trying to run it off but to no avail. The squirrel is unperturbed. This is a daily practice in the fall, opening the door and shouting, “Hey, get out of here!” at the squirrels who perch their fat bottoms in the center of the feeder bowl, or who dangle upside down from the suet holder, paying no mind to the rising chorus of chirping and chittering from the birds around them.
I return to my desk not sure what I was planning to say next, the thought having raced from my mind like the squirrel racing away from the sound of my voice. Perhaps it will return again in a few minutes, just as the squirrel does, or maybe it is gone for good this time and will be replaced with other ideas and observations, like so many birds swamping the feeder in the squirrel’s absence. They are hungry and hurried. They jockey for room around the bowl. Sometimes they push each other away, pecking at each other’s sides until one falls back away from the feeder. Other times they make space, swap turns so everyone gets a chance to eat some seeds. I love to watch them and realize now that I missed them over the summer—their noisy chatter, their busy wings.
In the weeks and months ahead, more and different varieties of birds will return to the feeder. Nuthatches and tufted titmice, house finches, and the occasional gold finch. Every time there is a bird I don’t recognize, I look it up in our bird book. Yesterday we spotted our first cardinal at the feeder. “Well, hello, old friend,” I said as it hopped along the ground picking up fallen seeds. “It’s so nice to see you again.”
If you’d like to read another piece about birds that isn’t actually about birds at all, check out “Call Notes,” originally published in (mac)ro(mic). (CW: cancer)