This feels like a somewhat complicated (or at least sticky) thing to explain, but I’m realizing a core part of my practice aims to “gift” my future self with more ease, more time, or the ability to take a break. In some ways this seems fine - I practice organization and planning to help reach my goals while being gentle with myself. But I’m also trying to investigate the impulse further to understand why I feel the need to exercise control. Allow me to elaborate:
I noticed this instinct when I started making the podcast about 6 years ago - I was thrilled to record 2 episodes in a month so that I could spread the finished episodes out over 2 months. It felt like I was setting future me up to be able to rest without guilt or fear that I would disappoint my audience. The same pattern is repeating in this newsletter - I start to draft an essay a month in advance and my first thought is something like “yeah, nice! I don’t have to write one later”. I feel like I’ve tricked myself (and tricked time) by getting it done “early”, and no one is any the wiser (ie I haven’t let anyone down).
This same instinct is part of my Making Things For No Baby In Particular practice, much as I hate to openly admit it. I know I say “no baby in particular”, but some of the garments are hopeful gestures toward my potential no baby in particular. When I’m being especially honest with myself, I acknowledge that I fear the realities of parenting and pregnancy so much that I am trying to gift myself with having already made The Things. Anxiety shows up for me - “what if I’m so sick I can’t do anything?”, “what if my kid just so happens to be the kid that doesn’t sleep?”. I worry about a future where I can’t meet my own needs (like sleeping 9 hours a night), and my forward-planning and control-desiring self shows up in these random acts of making for this hypothetical child.
Outside of my creative practice, the instinct is even stronger. Especially so when it comes to weekend chores - if only I can get half the chores done on Friday instead of Saturday, I’ll have more weekend to enjoy, I find myself thinking, regularly. This goes as far as me feeling inclined to try to water the plants earlier each week (usually I do so on Fridays, but my “get ahead” instinct says I can save myself time/headache by doing it on Thursday - this obviously could go on forever until I start watering my plants a day earlier every week). I meal plan, I meal prep, I write lists, I do these things while on the toilet, while watching shows, I’d try pretty much any multitasking to try to make life feel easier for Future Ani.
I logically know that there is no getting ahead, but I find myself consistently trying to anyway. I know that there will always be household chores to do, projects I will want to make, and things I just simply won’t have time or energy for. There will always be choices I have to make about how I spend my time. I’ll have to choose between two things I do want to do, or I’ll have to choose an annoying thing I don’t want to do because I must, to keep the wheels on the proverbial bus.
I find myself seeking solace in the ways that other people combat these urges, especially in Oliver Burkeman’s writing. I found Oliver’s newsletter last year (through someone else’s newsletter maybe? the details are fuzzy), and I was sucked in right away. I resonated with his frank assessment of traditional “productivity culture” and “life hacking” (as being, basically, bull shit), and I dutifully consumed his newsletters, which led me to preorder his book (I guess his marketing worked hook line and sinker on me). I devoured the first several chapters of the book, and I frequently come back to specific lines that feel particularly relevant, like this one, from the introduction aptly titled “In the Long Run, We’re All Dead”:
Arugably, time management is all life is. Yet the modern discipline known as time management — like its hipper cousin, productivity —is a depressingly narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible, or on devising the perfect morning routine, or on cooking all your dinners for the week in one big batch on Sundays. (ed note: youch, I feel attacked) These things matter to some extent, no doubt. But they’re hardly all that matters.
The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare producitivty guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.
These words comfort me (while calling me out). They speak to the part of me that can be obsessed with controlling details in service of hopefully making life easier. But they also speak to the part of me that isn’t convinced that life can be “hacked”, they speak to the part of me that is most interested in the unscalable, unoptimizable, wonder-full parts of life, that all my efforts toward getting ahead are truly in service of.
So I’m very much holding the ‘both/and’ here - I both appreciate the part of myself that is instinctively looking out for future me, and I can always use reminders that future me will be okay, whether I make those overnight oats tonight or tomorrow.
noticing & doing (the part where i share pics & links)
BIG NEWS: Episode 67, aka the FIRST episode of 2022 (!) is live! I am thrilled to share this conversation I had with McKenzie Mullen of EmToTheThird Yarn Co with y’all. McKenzie is a gem in so many ways, and I treasured getting to catch up with her after meeting her in person in 2020.
We talked about information sharing/gatekeeping in the textile community, queerness & zine culture, knitting as a mindfulness exercise, finding fruitful ways to connect on and offline, and making as a radical and joyful act of clothing yourself.
I love all of the beautiful future and current garments you've been making! Feeling you on time management thoughts <3