190. Hectic…k tock, tick tock

The relentless run-up.

Dec 15, 2024

In which Rebecca shares her thoughts on being restively festive.

white and red love print box — Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

Why is that whenever we’re counting down towards something time likes to change its character? One minute it’s an age to wait until Christmas; the next we’re begging the wheels of time to stop spinning.

When I was little, the time between birthdays felt like so much more than a year, and at the start of every school term the holidays were unimaginably distant. Yet time passed slowly on the positive side, too, with those long schoolfree summers seeming to stretch forever. I would even find myself looking forward to reestablishing my schoolday routine come September – although I’d never dare to admit this to anyone at the time.

Given that relative to my adult age a single year is a much, much smaller fraction than it used to be, it has not escaped my attention that time is ticking faster these days.

When there’s a lot going on in life time resets itself to warp speed, and at the moment I am grateful for any days that are less hectic than expected in which I can find some space to pause and rest.

But it’s advent, and with Christmas at this countdown’s inevitable climax everything demands to be done to a deadline. Time is its own immalleable master, and this morning I was lucky to have even got breakfast cleared away before my list of lists started exacting demands of its own.

For retailers and shoppers alike, in the run-up to Christmas busyness becomes bigger business, with every shop – be it online or High Street – clamouring for both our focus and our funds.

A room filled with lots of snow globes — Photo by Igor Karimov 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

Potential purchases plead ‘pick me!’, with glitzy displays in artisan boutiques and the stacks of sprouts at straw-baled stalls of a farmers’ market having seemingly equal power to pull us in.

Mind you, it’s already mid-December, so those sprouts are calling in vain. Reader, every self-respecting Brit has had their Brussels on the boil since the August bank holiday weekend. #itsthelaw

#heavyirony
#IamJOKING

a group of watermelons — Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

Humour aside, for Reader, this is tragic, Jim likes to recount horror stories of childhood Christmas dinners at which ‘a sprout wasn’t deemed to be cooked unless it could be flattened by the weight of only a fork’.

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️

Boiling sprouts is not an endurance sport.
Too much time is a crime: five minutes TOPS, people!

⏰

#bekindtosprouts

Not so much festive 🎄 as restive 😌

I’m spending my time hunkering down in the warmest corner of my little house with a pile of Christmas cards, envelopes and stamps, and feeling grateful for the opportunity to exchange festive greetings and correspond with friends and family about 2024 and our plans for 2025.

Time is an elastic band with the power to contract and expand according to its circumstances. It will ping back painfully when stretched too hard, or if given the freedom of flexibility it can fly without a backward glance to its oops-too-slow starting point.

You see, we can’t rush time. We can neither speed it up nor slow it down, but we can adjust our relationship to it. We can use it or abuse it; make the most or the least of it.

Right now I’m occupying my time in a way that’s more calm than chaotic, and as a result I’m enjoying the relationship I have with myself a whole lot more.

I’m not – like a child – going to wish away the days between now and the 25th, and nor am I yet ready to indulge in the anticipation of the new year’s clock striking midnight.

Not for me the hectic…k tick-tock of the countdown, no. I’m seeking solace in the stillness of my restive season.

With love,

Rebecca

Winning at whelm - an edited extract of a post first published in December 2022

In the busy run-up to Christmas I’ve been hearing all sorts of compound words to describe either an inability to cope or an uncomfortable sense of pressure.

Overtired is one. Steamrollered is another. And Reader, I see the word overwhelm everywhere.

Can I even call overwhelm a compound word when whelm no longer exists in isolation? We have overwhelm and underwhelm, but modern English is lacking in actual whelm.

The word whelm is one we don’t use today, but it means to engulf or to submerge. It is a surge of water. If a boat is whelmed, the water is threatening to creep over the gunwales and flood the vessel. If it then becomes overwhelmed, well, that boat is pretty much sinking.

I’m interpreting modern-day whelm for myself as being not quite overwhelm… but nearly.

WHELM: my own definition

🍽️

If I have a lot on my metaphorical plate of Christmas dinner but am pretty sure I can just about gobble up all that turkey without it being too much for me, I am whelmed.

Whelm is not simply a happy medium, the equator between the poles of overwhelm and underwhelm, no. Instead, it is just the right side of overwhelm. Whelm is busy, very busy, but not yet TOO busy. It’s a feeling of ‘I can’t do much more than this, but I can do this.’ It’s ‘wow, I feel great: I’ve got a lot on but I’m nailing all of it’. It’s a challenge that’s just about still comfortable.

And that’s exactly what I need in the run-up to what is always a busy festive season. I need to be more whelmed.

I mean, yeah, I could relax a bit: take my foot off the gas. Chill. Curl up and read a book one afternoon instead of choosing to tackle ever more of the tasks on my to-do list.

But that’s a double-edged sword. In order not to overwhelm myself by throwing everything at every task on my list like a whirling dervish, I’m risking being unimpressed and underwhelmed by what I’m not achieving towards Christmas.

Because my to-do list needs to-doing, right?

How will I feel if it doesn’t get to-done?

I want to be busy, but in my all-or-nothing approach to life I’m risking either idleness or burnout. And in the middle the happy medium is very comfortable, yes, but disappointingly non-committal.

Reader, I’m happy to settle for beyond medium. I want more than enough to do: I want whelm. Because the right place for me is at the edge, my nose pressed up against the line between the middle and the gone-too-far. I don’t want to breach the boundary, leave my gunwales unprotected and risk my boat sinking, but I want to be in the not-quite-so precarious position of being able to challenge overwhelm up close and laugh in its face at its vain attempts to swamp me.

Do I have enough on my plate? Absolutely. Do I want more? No thanks. Offering me both challenge and comfort, whelm is a platter of festive plenty with not quite too much on it.

I’m happy with that.

Dear Reader, I'm lost

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