Returning to my trees

Briefly: Join my Patreon community | Stray Attention was a Substack Reads pick! | and Wintering was an Oprah Daily pick! | AND Wintering is a Comfort Book Club pick! | Sorry I sent out both newsletters on the wrong day last week *facepalm*

Hello,

There is a Welsh saying I like very much: 

Dod yn ôl at fy nghoed. 

To return to my trees. 

It means coming back into balance, reaching a calmer state of mind. For me, it’s quite literal. The two are intertwined. I need to spend some time with some actual trees sometimes, so that I can see the wood for them. 

That’s what I did last week. Almost on a whim, I decided to take a week away from social media and emails, and to go forward without a plan, just to see what would happen. As readers of this newsletter will know, I’ve been on the edge of burnout lately. My brain was endlessly foggy, and I was spending my days feeling blurry and harried, unsure what to focus on next. Whatever it was seemed urgent, but also beyond my reach. I was sure I wasn’t doing enough.

I write about rest for a living. That’s not because I’m naturally good at resting. It’s because I’ve had to work at it, and because I’ll always be consciously practising it. I’m easily bored, and I have more good ideas than I can enact, and I might just also - maybe, sometimes - overcommit myself. But I’m also prone to burning myself out so absolutely that I’m incapacitated for six months. After getting it wrong many times, I’ve learned to notice the signs of overload, to take a step back and reassess my commitments. If I had a superpower, it would be cancelling projects that are no longer working in my favour, and avoiding making plans that I know will drain the life out of me. Those are skills I’ve acquired the hard way, and I’m always trying to pass them on. 

What did I do on my week off? Very, very little indeed. I put up my Out Of Office and let my week unfold from there, following my desires from day to day, hour to hour. My friend Neil Baker once told me that creative people need to make space and not time: to drop the obsession with ‘putting in hours’ or ‘squeezing in some time to make work’, and enter into a more ambiguous, less directive place where anything can happen. What did that mean in practice for me? Well, I walked up to an ancient church about an hour from my house, which I’d always meant to explore. I read Nigel Slater’s Christmas Chronicles yet again. I baked a big pile of biscotti, gave some away, and ate many more. I wandered around the Christmas displays of the local shops and thought about the gifts I’d like to buy my loved ones. I took myself out for breakfast. I de-fuzzed all my knitwear. And, yes, I spent some time amid my favourite trees, getting wet in the November drizzle. 

It was all gloriously unproductive, and I needed it, because behind it all, a process was happening. I was thinking, thinking, thinking, musing on how this all works now, how I can keep my life in balance, how to keep hold of the joy. I wrestled with my discomfort at how lucky I feel to be a full-time writer, and conselled myself that ‘full time writer’ does not have to equal a nine-to-five job. 

Most of all, I just noticed my own behaviour, my habits and my routines. Noticing is such a powerful tool, as long as we can be gentle with it. I noticed last week how often my phone was in my hand without me meaning to have picked it up, how quickly I can swipe up that screen and be into my emails without having any intention of checking them. I noticed how soon I divert to staring at a screen when the action of the day falls slack, how often I feel anxious and so stumble into Twitter to see if anyone else feels anxious, too. (Spoiler: they always do.) I noticed how, even when I managed to stop myself halfway through the process of checking my messages, I’d close down the app and then open it right up again, as if my hands didn’t know what to do without it. Sometimes these loops were very hard to stop. It got easier as the week went on. 

Eventually, I admitted to myself that I’ve been feeling stressed, even though I didn’t think I ought to be. Stress is not a great respecter of oughts, and it will be having a toxic effect on our bodies whether we acknowledge it or not. I reconfigured my plans and my patterns. I made more space. I spent more time with my trees. 

I feel a little guilty writing this at all, because I know that most people reading it will not be able to stop dead in their tracks, as I did. But what everyone can do, I think, is notice. And from that noticing, go on to make adjustments big and small, long term and short. It was noticing that led me to build this life in the first place, this life where I could stop when I needed to, this life that allows me to reframe and reimagine. This week, I’m grateful for it.

Over on Patreon, we’ve been talking this over, and we’ve decided to start a gentle project together - not a social media detox, but a fascination retox. I’ll be sharing a weekly prompt, and we’ll be exploring our response together. Do join us!

My News

Last Friday, I spent an evening at the gorgeous Little Green Bookshop in Herne Bay, where we talked about swimming, writing and the pleasures of feeling the cold. I’m so excited to see so many bookshops springing up all over Kent - do drop in if you’re ever in town. 

Speaking of bookshops, if you’d like a signed and dedicated copy of Wintering as a Christmas present, you can order from Harbour Books here, and add your dedication to the order notes. You can request a hardback if you prefer, using their request any book feature. UK only, I’m afraid. 

Due to general burnout/life crises in my team (please send all your love to Meghan, who has been truly living the Wintering life of late) the new season of the podcast is a bit delayed. I absolutely promise it’s worth waiting for! But we’re being kind to ourselves about our capacity right now.

At the Rookery…

We had an amazing Book Club discussion about embracing your elder years with Hagitude author Sharon Blackie, and spent an hour in the glorious company of Leah Hazard for our monthly hangout. Both are available on Patreon now for members to re-watch. 

Next month’s book club pick is Lost & Found by Kathryn Shulz - an incredible memoir of love and grief from a Pulitzer Prize winner. Join our amazing community here!

Okay, time for a little break. Nigel Slater doesn’t re-read himself, you know. 

Take care, 

Katherine

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