Do less
I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions – why make January, notoriously the worst month, more joyless? – but the one thing I’m going to try and do this year is, well, less.
Back in October, I saw Elizabeth Day interview Jessie Cave as part of the How To Fail tour and something they talked about has lingered in my mind ever since. I can’t remember the exact quote so I’ll have to paraphrase, but basically Cave said she puts her energy into the three most important things in her life: her children, her relationship, and her career – and everything else takes a backseat. ‘Everything’ being, quite often, friendships. Cave made the point that in the early child-rearing years, a lot of friendships go out the window – there simply isn’t the time – but the right friends are still there once life is calmer again. (Unrelated: this is my favourite Jessie Cave print.)
It was an echo of something Nigel Slater said in his own episode of the How To Fail podcast: ‘My friends are so wonderful I cannot tell you – they are the most important things in my life. And I suspect that they would probably do anything for me. Now I like to think I would do that for them… [but] I will not do anything I don’t want to do.’ There's something incredibly refreshing about his attitude; I cannot imagine being so accepting of myself and so confident that I'd be OK when other people disapproved, but my God, it's something to aim for.
It's not for me to state whether I’m a good friend or not, but I know I take something of a laissez-faire approach. All my best mates have two things in common: endless patience, obviously, but also being the sorts of people who don’t need to be in constant contact for it to count as friendship. We’re all ‘pick up where we left off when we can’ types, and for that I’m immensely grateful. But being a present and reliable friend is something I worry about more and more, and I often feel I’m fucking it up. I say yes to invitations because I want to be someone who shows up, but I overestimate my energy levels, descend into panic and cancel at the last minute with embarrassing regularity.
Hence the decision to, in some ways, do less this year. To make sure it’s something I really want to do before I say yes. We all have our non-negotiables, which usually include: making sure the rent/mortgage gets paid, keeping any dependants alive, and maintaining an acceptable standard of cleanliness. File almost everything else under ‘optional’, and take it from there. As someone who runs on guilt, I’m scared of becoming more ruthless about where I spend my time and energy – but I know I need to try, in order to write the things that matter to me.
Making things – turning your thoughts, feelings and neuroses into music, art, prose, poetry or, to use a baffling phrase beloved of my A-level German teacher*, underwater basket-weaving – is demanding on one's brainpower and emotions, and it's never a strictly 9-5 gig. You need to be in vaguely the right frame of mind to do good work, and there's a lot of 'shoulds' that can get in the way of that. If there's something that doesn't feel wholly necessary, ask yourself who you're doing it for.
It’s arguably a more selfish way to live, but when you focus your attention on the things that matter to you, the things that feel as warm and golden and nourishing as May sunshine, you’re going to put more good into the world overall.
*a terrifying Bulgarian lady with perfect flicky eyeliner and a major Diet Coke habit. Instead of taking a register, she’d give us a new irregular verb and at the start of the next class we’d each have to use it in a sentence, conjugated correctly. She wouldn’t help us out if we cocked it up, either, she’d just say “nein!” and move on to the next person.
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