Winter Blessings and Beauties, Day 2: Work/Life Balance

This morning Facebook reminded me in a rather timely fashion of something I wrote  a few years back for Pagan Pages e-zine (you can find my article here). It seems related to this new project about embracing winter, as it is a piece questioning our attitudes to the dark, and we are - no doubt about it - now in the 'dark half' of the year. It set me pondering about the reasons we seem to have a hard time being positive about the winter. The cold, dark, damp days when we have to bundle up against the elements are one obvious reason, and the article I have linked to hopefully begins the process of re-thinking those attitudes. But another, perhaps less obvious reason, appeared to me when I began this series of posts. 

When I came up with the idea of 'Winter Blessings and Beauties' I wanted to find a short, succinct title that would sum up what I was trying to convey about winter. I wanted something positive and encouraging, something that was cosy but not boring, something that conveyed the idea of all the positive aspects of winter. Words like 'Hygge' and 'Cwtch' (from the Danish and Welsh respectively) seemed good, but I wanted an English equivalent. I wanted to include the idea that winter should be a time of rest and renewal for ourselves, a breathing space attuned to the slower, deeper rhythms of nature in winter. In search for such a word, I turned to an online Thesaurus and looked for synonyms for words like 'rest' and 'relax'. As I browsed through the results returned by the thesaurus - branching off along the way into a kind of mind-map of words around these ideas - I was shocked. There were so many judgemental, negative words relating to this idea. Just a small selection - 'idle, laze, loaf, loll, slack off, bum, dilly dally, loiter, dawdle, fritter away, wallow, indolence, sloth, vegetate, waste time, lounge around...'. Oh dear! It seems like taking some time out for yourself to rest and recuperate is not really seen as a good thing.

Why should this be the case? Presumably it's partly the legacy of the Protestant Work Ethic which stresses the virtue of hard work as a path to salvation. It's all well and good to encourage people to take a share of the work that needs doing to benefit the community as a whole, but such absolutist thinking devalues anyone who is not able to contribute in this way due to disability or illness. I do not believe that personal worth should be based predominantly on levels of productivity. I also strongly believe that people should be encouraged to self-care by taking the time they need to rest and restore themselves. The trouble is, the work ethic is so thoroughly engrained in our society that we all tend to beat ourselves up, either consciously or unconsciously when we are not being what we think of as 'productive'. 

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I was married for years to a workaholic, who used constant work as a way to avoid feeling, acknowledging or examining any of his more difficult emotions. No wonder the relationship fell apart! But what lesson did I take from this? Unfortunately not the right one. Guilt at the failure of my marriage turned into guilt that I had not worked hard enough to match T's efforts, and after a period of stunned inactivity while I licked my wounds and tried to make sense of the wreckage of my life I threw myself back into paid work. When my marriage ended I had been out of paid employment for some time for a variety of reasons (in the years leading up to my divorce my 'job' had been staying home and managing the smallholding), and I found it hard to find a single full time job. But in the end I amassed a collection of part-time jobs which at least kept my head above water financially. And every time more part-time work appeared, anxious about my lack of job security and the resulting constant threat of poverty I said yes. And yes. And yes. By the time the first Covid lockdown hit this spring, I was working a total of 6 different part time jobs over 6 or 7 days a week. I was permanently exhausted. In this respect lockdown was actually a blessing for me. I was unable to work any of my jobs, and ultimately several of them came to a permanent end because of the virus. By the time the first period of lockdown ended I was left with only two jobs out of 6, and a 2½  day work week. Yet to my surprise this has been my salvation. I have become incredibly frugal (even so I've had to dip into my savings), but my quality of life has improved immeasurably. And paradoxically my anxiety about a penurious old age has lessened. I'm living in the now instead of feeling guilty about the past and anxious about the future, and my mental and physical health has improved dramatically. I am working on things which don't necessarily put money in my pocket - such as growing some of our food, writing, cooking proper meals from scratch, making and mending - but which give me a huge sense of satisfaction and well-being. And I am taking time too to rest and recuperate when I need it. My sister has been telling me for years to 'put on your own oxygen mask first' - she was right. 

So let's try to shift that 'work good, self-care bad' way of thinking to a more balanced viewpoint, shall we? We can take a valuable lesson from the natural world during the winter months - all living beings need periods of 'time out', time to rest and recuperate, breathe and take stock, allowing our bodies and minds space to process and heal. Just as we sleep at night to rest and recharge ourselves, let's take the gift offered by winter of a rejuvenating period of slowness, introspection, quiet, dark, and rest. 

Winter Blessings and Beauties: Day 2

Work:Life Balance

On paper or in your journal, draw a circle. Divide it into equal 'pie slices' and label each slice with a different area of your life: Work, Leisure, Family, Friends, Significant Other/Love, Finances, Spirituality, Health (you can create your own categories if these ones are not relevant to you). Then use a coloured pencil to fill in each slice from the centre outwards according to how satisfied you are with each area of your life. So if you are really happy with your health at the moment, colour in most of the Health slice from centre to outside edge - and if you feel you've not been able to engage with your Spirituality lately, only colour in a small piece of that slice near the centre of the chart. You can use different colours for each slice if you like. Remember that no one is going to see this apart from you, so be totally honest. When you have filled in each slice, look at the chart as a whole. Which areas are you very happy with? Which areas need some attention? Which areas are being neglected? 

Use your journal to explore how you feel about each area of your life. How could you improve things so that the areas are more balanced with each other? What would a balanced life look like? How could you get from here to there? Remember, you don't have to completely rearrange your life overnight. You don't have to find all the answers straight away. But if you can see some small steps that you could take, take note - and begin to implement them. Keep a record of each step you take, and record your progress. 

It might be interesting to re-visit this exercise at the Winter Solstice and then again at Imbolc, to measure the changes as they unfold?