This week, I got a promotion (or a title change, depending on how you look at it) and a raise.
It is good news. It means my work has been noticed. It means someone recognized that what I contribute has value. And, practically speaking, more money matters. It gives me a little breathing room. I would like to be able to sit with that accomplishment for a while and feel uncomplicatedly proud of it.
But accomplishment rarely arrives in an uncomplicated week.
I am exhausted.
Work has been stressful, and I have also been adding new students to the music lessons I teach as I am determined to get into a financially happier situation. I keep fitting more work into the spaces around my existing work, as though those spaces were empty and waiting to be filled. On paper, it probably looks industrious. From inside my body, it mostly feels like being tired all the time.
Even walking the dogs has become complicated. I have wanted to be much more intentional about giving the dogs more attention and better lives. Somehow, through the extremely athletic act of walking, I managed to pull a muscle in my calf. It hurts enough to turn every step into a small reminder that wanting to do more and being able to do more are not always the same thing.
There is something almost offensively ordinary about injuring yourself while trying to take better care of your dogs. There was no dramatic fall or heroic effort. As I limp about home, work, and the barn, I am justifiably annoyed at this leg of mine for slowing me down.
Still, the reason behind the walking matters to me.
I want to dedicate more time to the dogs. I don’t want their lives to consist mostly of waiting for me to finish working, worrying about work or recovering from work. They deserve walks, new smells, play, attention and experiences that belong entirely to them. I want to be present for those things instead of mentally composing tomorrow’s to-do list while I hold the leash.
I feel something similar when I look at the yard.
Winter is coming, and I want to prepare the ground now so that I will be ready to plant in the spring. There are things to clean up, protect and put to bed. None of it is glamorous, and very little of it offers immediate gratification. Preparing a garden for winter is an act of faith in a season that has not arrived yet.
Maybe that is what I am really craving: the chance to invest my energy in something that grows slowly.
Work is full of urgency. Extra work is even more urgent because every lesson is connected to money I need or might need. But dogs do not care about titles, and a garden cannot be hurried into spring. Both ask for attention that is steady rather than frantic.
I am proud of my promotion. I am grateful for the raise. I also know that success cannot mean continually giving more of myself away because I have proven that I am capable of it.
The life I am working for is not supposed to begin at some future point when I have finally earned enough, accomplished enough or finished every task. It is already here. It is in the dogs waiting by the door. It is in the yard before the first hard frost. It is even in the painful calf telling me that I cannot build a gentler life by treating my body like an inconvenience.
I don’t have a perfect plan for balancing all of this. This week, balance might mean celebrating the promotion, teaching the lessons I have committed to, resting my leg and accepting that the yard does not need to be transformed in a single weekend.
Maybe making room for a life begins that simply: noticing what matters, admitting that my energy is finite and choosing not to spend every bit of it on work.
Spring will come whether I exhaust myself preparing for it or not.
Leave a comment