30. Driven by (too much) detail

Setting an intention for the minutiae not to dwarf the big stuff, and feeling relieved to have put a project on hold.

Not today’s walk - by the time I’d left the house it had become too dark for snaps! I’ve had a birthday, and the weather on that day was so revolting (torrential rain, thunderstorms and almost gale-force winds) that the walk I’d planned for myself didn’t happen. Here I am contemplating a panoramic view to the north from the ridge of the South Downs on my delayed birthday walk a little later in the week. 🎈

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Dear Reader,

In his recent post ‘The Pre-Routine’

Adam Ming

shared the concept of starting his day with ‘scheduled procrastination’. Adam, a children’s book illustrator, has a structured routine for his working life, and in order not to become distracted by his daily tasks once he starts work, he makes time for that stuff first.

Adam’s post really got me thinking about the challenge of routine in my own life, specifically the fact that I don’t really think I have one. I commented to Adam that every day is different for me, but that I’d love to develop a little more focus and orientation.

He shot back this reply:

How are you thinking about doing that? I love how you use the word orientation here.

Well, that got me thinking. My response:

I'm not quite sure how to go about it, Adam, but I'd love to have a default routine regardless of what my tasks are - my work/leisure life tends to be flexible and spontaneous, which is why I find it difficult to have a single system. Reckon I need a flow chart....! 🤣

Orientation is an important theme for me. I call myself a 'disorient' (my own term) in that I get so easily (geographically) lost, but it's not only in the physical, real-life world that I need to orientate myself. I feel direction is necessary in the more abstract world, too, in terms of identify task-accomplishment trajectories, setting out plans for the future (not just distant, but the next hour, kind of thing), as well as that big question at the start of every day that is generally along the lines of 'what-the-heck-am-I-supposed-to-be-doing?'

I'm a planner, and I'm really good at that planning. I mean, I get through my tasks. However, I'm generally not on top of the HOW and the WHY aspects of my life, and I think once I orientate myself to get those sorted I'll be in a better position to focus more consistently.

And I’ve continued to think about this ever since.

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

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Yes, I get lost on walks – you already know this about me – but I had thought I had a clear sense of how to orientate myself on a more abstract in-my-head level through my days, weeks and heck, my life.

I had thought I set an intended path for my day every day. Reader, my ‘how’ is a daily log: a page in my bullet journal where I write my to-dos and jot down notes to record something – a phone call I took, for instance, or the fact that tomorrow’s Remembrance Sunday – and this log not only orientates me for the day but later shows me the tasks that I’ve accomplished.

But do I have a routine?

PLOT SPOILER 👎

No.

Reader, there is no actual routine in my life. My daily timetable I don’t have a daily timetable is chaotic and ever-changing, and I might be scheduled to be out on a shoot, out working at my casual job, at my desk wrestling with spreadsheets, in the van headed for a far-flung part of the country on another work trip, or at home concentrating on domestic matters such as cleaning the bath or cooking like a demon to restock the freezer. Most days are filled with a heady mix of desk tasks, work stuff and home admin. Every day is different.

So what if my life isn’t the sort of life that is geared towards routine? I don’t have a nine-to-five job. Nobody’s expecting me to turn up at their office to work at one of their desks all day. I don’t have children: the only person I have to get up, washed, dressed, breakfasted and ready for the day is myself.
(And my husband. If he’s lucky. Thankfully he pretty much looks after himself.)

I know I can orientate myself to do the everyday stuff. Reader, I nail that list on a daily basis. And I can look in one of my bullet journal notebooks and tell you what I achieved on any given day since 2018: where I was, how I felt, what kinds of things were happening in the world, whether I was waving a reflector at a film star on a sunny hillside, completing my tax return, filling in model consent forms, keywording stock library images or had simply got disproportionately annoyed one evening because I’d scorched the sausages again.

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I’m driven by detail. I love the minutiae. My detailed planning gets things done, but by concentrating only on these tiny, ‘microroutines’ that are the little loops of yarn holding my flimsy, gappy, stretchy piece of life-knitting together, I sometimes wonder whether I’ve been missing the bigger picture. Those very detailed details on those crucial, can’t-live-without pages which make each day happen task by task and note by note don’t include any big stuff.

‘Have tos’ abound on my daily log. It’s mostly ‘want tos’ that are missing in action.

For a long time I had felt my biggest ‘want to’ was to write my book. I’ve brainstormed it, planned it, drafted bits and pieces, written list after list of what I want to include. There is a daunting mass of tasks written in my writing notebook, and no matter which way I’ve looked at it, working on this project hasn’t seemed to fit in with the haphazard ‘routine’ I’ve just been banging on about.

THUNDERBOLT MOMENT ⚡️

Flicking through my bullet journal last week I noticed to my horror that any tasks related to writing my book have been absent from my daily logs; instead, they remain steadfastly rooted to the pages of my writing notebook. I had no idea.

So am I even surprised that I’m not writing my book?
No. And I don’t expect you’re surprised, either.

Look at what your priorities are, Rebecca. They clearly don’t involve your book!

Is it even my ‘why’ that I need to work on, like I was telling Adam?
Or is it simply that my ‘why’ is more of a ‘why I should not’?

SOOTHED BY A WALK 🌳

Having truly fried my brain I was crying out for a walk to set things straight with myself. And that’s another thing: I’ve got the standing item ‘exercise’ on every single daily log – but that only means I go for a walk if I’m lucky. These days – I’m busy, it’s getting dark so early, it’s November and pouring with rain – I’m happy if I can just grab five minutes of swearing sweating on the hand-me-down rowing machine in the lean-to every morning. Reader, I’m struggling to find the opportunity to even get lost.
(Geographically, I mean. I think you’ll agree that I’m not struggling with that on a metaphorical level.)

I didn’t set off for my walk until half past three this afternoon, and for mid-November on a dingy, overcast day that meant it was already getting dark. But it was still gorgeous out there: the sky was striped in pink and grey-blue, and the dawn redwoods still had some of their leaves to show me in the dimming light. I didn’t even mind wading through nearly ankle-deep mud – I was simply grateful that it wasn’t still raining.

And I felt relieved.

Why?

THE PENNY DROPS 😮

The answer is simple: I’ve realised that I feel absolutely fine about not being ready to write my book.

Perhaps one day I will be ready to join the dots between my love of – and success in – accomplishing a large volume of little things and my one-day desire to write a big thing.

So that’s my intention. I’ll write my book once I’m ready. And at that point I will take the daunting plan in my writing notebook and add a task from it – just one task – to the daily log in my bullet journal. That one task will be a single loop in that piece of life-knitting of mine. Writing my book will be part of that piece of knitting, not a separate entity. By incorporating the project into my daily routine it will find its way guided by intention, purpose and my deliciously detail-driven daily logs.

For now, though, I’m going to continue to loop words into little scenes on Substack like this one, practising my writing and building that stretchy piece of life-knitting one loop – one task – one post – at a time.

BREAKTHROUGH 🙌

Reader, in navigating my way through everyday life I reckon I can focus consistently, and I’m orientating myself just fine. And when I’ve got my next big project on the cards, I’ll know to break it down and make sure that it is enough of a priority for me to be on my daily log.

And as 'bangers and mash'¹ is listed for dinner on today's daily log, by this evening that page might even include some commentary on how well I cooked the sausages this time.

Let’s see.

Love,

Rebecca

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But wait, there’s more…

I’d love to share this with you – it’s the picture caption for last month on my kitchen wall calendar. It really touched me.

Dear Mr Mustard can take exactly the same walk there and back and it seems like he’s been on two completely different paths. His secret? One way he has his head in the clouds and his mind full of daydreams. The other, his eyes are on the ground and he’s taking the smallest of steps so that he can be noticing all of the little things he missed first time round.

Every Christmas for the past I-don’t-know-how-many-years I have been delighted to receive Sam Toft’s wall calendar. It is absolutely delightful. Visit Sam’s website, where you’ll be greeted by an animation of Mr Mustard riding his bike… with his dog, his bird and his goldfish on board.

I’m sure you’ll agree that Sam’s art is beautiful. And she writes like a dream. Do have a look!

1. Why Are They Called Bangers ?

British sausages being called bangers seems to be a historical legacy, a colloquial term left over from war time when sausages sometimes exploded in the pan when you cooked them. We started calling sausages bangers sometime during the first World War, it was a slang name for a sausage at the time.

British sausages are sometimes called bangers because back then, sausages had a habit of bursting open while cooking. This was partly due to the shrinkage of the tight skin (this is still quite a common occurrence depending on the sausage if you do not prick them before cooking) and partly because of the cheap sausage fillers that they were using at the time.

During both world wars there was less meat available, they filled their sausages more fat and cheap fillers that expanded rapidly under heat, causing the sausages to burst open violently in the pan. This is the reason why people called them bangers, it was a slang term that they used to refer to sausages, because bang is exactly what they would when you cooked them.

Taken from The English Breakfast Society website.