I have it good. I can’t deny that.
I think of how I get to spend my day. The working hours I spend doing things I love… storytelling, being creative. I get to do this in service of climate vulnerable communities around the world. What a treat. It gives me so many opportunities to meet people and see where they live. How they live.
My home hours I get to spend with the greatest people of earth, three of whom just arrived in the past few years. It’s chaos a lot of the time, but also a delight. It’s the family life I always prayed for.
Even in the margins, the moments of play, I get so much opportunity to do what I love. Improv and illustration and running.
I should be enthusiastically enamored with every single moment, right?
Well, if not totally at that level, I should at least be able to recognize that almost every activity that comprises my day is something that I chose. That at one point I decided, “I would really like to be doing that with my life.”
And I recognize that this is a privilege, one that eludes so many people.
So why do I spend so many days feeling uneasy about not getting everything done on time? Why does it feel like I’m often trying to get a task “just over with” rather than sitting and savoring each one?
Is this what happens when you have too much of a good thing? When you have so many ideas and ambitions you’re trying to serve that you end up crowding out the things that make each one special?
It’s a common “area to work on” I get about my creative work. It actually doesn’t surprise me much that the feedback applies more broadly to my life.
There’s a scene in an episode from Full House that sticks with me quite a bit.
Now, I haven’t actually seen the episode or scene in over twenty years, so my memory is quite fuzzy. But the fact that I think about it somewhat regularly must mean there’s a big of, um, emotional truth that lodged its way into my long term storage.
It’s a day when for whatever reason, Danny Tanner winds up spending the whole day with his girls. They visit a cool aquarium, head out on the town, and do a bunch of cool 1990s San Francisco-y things.
After all that excitement, he’s tucking them in at night… most likely in those beds with the giant pencils for bedposts. But in spite of such an awesome day, one of his kids is sad. (DJ, perhaps? Feels like a DJ kind of move.)
Anyways, he asks her what’s wrong, and she explains that she had a hard time enjoying the day with the knowledge that at some point it had to be over.
This is about as existential as TGIF had ever gotten, but it’s a thought that had the air of familiarity.
I’ve been there.
Knowing that what’s in front of you is the best thing ever, but that it’s not gonna stick around forever. It can’t. You know you should be happier about the fact that it’s unfolding right now! That it’s right there, in front of your face. You can’t be any more within the moment. And yet, the awareness that it’s temporary seems to pull you out of it.
What’s a 1990s sitcom kid supposed to do in a Netflix limited series kind of world?
Recently, I found myself unpacking my bags in Paramaribo, Suriname to a clash of feelings.
I was happy to be there, exploring one of the least visited countries in South America. I was appreciative of how much opportunity I had to travel lately. Seeing new places made me feel more alive.
At least usually.
This time around, however, I was also dead tired. I found myself thinking that I wish the trip could be happening at a different time. After I’d had a moment to decompress from a recent busy season.
That night, I decided to forgo an extra opportunity to explore in order to go real slow, read, and draw in the hotel room. It felt a bit wrong, having gone so far and having made it to such an under-the-radar destination, but spending the first night this way. But deep within I knew that this was the right choice that would make the trip as a whole more enjoyable.
Such a decision, and the feelings that led to it, come with a tinge of guilt.
I’m really fortunate and privileged to be able to do what I do. To have work that allows me to travel and to be creative. To have a family life that is able to accommodate it. To have so many pieces in play that allow me to do what I love. I know that’s not something everybody has, and I know that it’s not something that comes easy.
So to take that gift and squander it on an early night in?
Over the past year, I’ve brushed up several times against the phenomenon that having too many good things in one space often diminishes each one. It’s a trend that repeats in visual art, in gardening, and in how we live our lives.
The space in between is important.
The kids have recently reconfigured their sleeping arrangements.
Everyone’s now at an age where it makes more sense to split the twins and have my boys be roommates. The tuck-in routine has a new rhythm.
I have such a wild relationship with tuck-in time.
On one hand, the hours from 6-9 PM are routinely the most chaotic. It’s usually when the kids tend to have the highest energy and the lowest patience for each other. It’s also when the chores converge. Dinner and dishes and clean up time, and on certain nights, bathtime, trash collection, and lunch packing.
After finally crossing off each item, things finally end with stillness. Storytime. Prayer. Perhaps a random conversation or tender moment with one of the kids. And when they’re drifting off is when I remember different chapters of doing this routine. At one, in a crib. At three, in a toddler bed. At five, with a brother as a new roommate. The stillness and sweetness is a strange aftertaste, post-chaos.
And this has been pretty much every night for the past five years.
And then I spend a good chunk of whatever’s left in the day watching shows, reading, drawing, and hanging with Deanna, but in the back of my mind is how quickly the kids are growing and how amazing they are. I want to make sure I’m savoring the parenting journey, knowing that more experienced parents have all said it goes by too fast at a rate of 100%. At one point, I didn’t even know if a family like this was possible. If it would be in the cards for us. And now, it’s the spitting image of abundance.
A stray meme once told me, “parenthood is largely rushing your kids along, trying to get them to hurry up and go to bed, so you can then whip out your phone and scroll through all the photos you took of them throughout the day.”
Pretty much sums it up.
Right now, the most urgent thing in my life is to remove as much urgency as possible.
How many tasks could be enjoyable, if only they didn’t end with the qualifier “by the end of the day”?
How much more enjoyable would the night time routine be if you didn’t feel like you abandoned a work task mid-flow, just to get these responsibilities taken care of, before jumping back in? What if you actually shut your laptop with the aim of shutting it down? And what if allowed you to better remember that this tuck in time is bonding time? A time to meet the kids in their goofiness and to play?
And what if each time you took on the work tasks, you did so with less urgency and more space? What if opening up all the files you’re working on could feel like a musician hopping into the studio, ready to tap into a flow state and get into a groove?
What if the space in between activities, in between trips, in between adventures was restful and open, allowing you to reflect on those adventures properly? And then whenever your next trip rolls around, it doesn’t feel like an add-on, but a whole distinct entree in and of itself. It’s value is there.
Artistic mastery often looks like understanding the value of space. The expansiveness of the worlds created by Hayao Miyazaki not wanting to rush through an exposition. The way Justin Vernon lingers on every single note until he’s good and ready to move to the next one. The way Min Jin Lee took 30 years to work on Pachinko, letting its story span eight decades, and in doing so creating a watershed epic novel. Even in trying to hang up some of my artwork around the house, I recognize that there’s a point of things being too crammed. It’s a line I frequently step over.
Space is sacred. And one of my top priorities right now is to stop overscheduling. To worry less about getting stuff done.
To live the actual moment.