I inadvertently played an absolute blinder this week. Some might call it a case of ‘very poor admin’, but I’m choosing to believe it was some form of divine intervention where my lack of organisational skills saved me from several days racing around London during a heatwave.
Last week, when the temperatures were in the mid to high 20s, I ventured into London several times, once wearing a white linen shirt and a crossbody bag. I should know better, of course, but I also walk everywhere so when I arrived at lunch with my friend Charlotte, who PRs exclusive and achingly chic beauty brands such as Victoria Beckham Beauty, Vieve and La Roche Posay, I did so with a diagonal strip of sweat across my torso and a brow so full of sweat I had to excuse myself before I even sat down so I could expunge it in the privacy of a toilet cubicle.
These trips in and out of London never feel particularly glamorous when I arrive home and have to shed my clothes like a second skin, standing in front of the washing machine, before skulking into a cold shower. It’s not just the layers of sweat that are sometimes twice or even three times dried into every thread and pore, but the filth from a city that seems to cover you in a fine film of grime.
Anyway, it’s rank and I don’t care for it, which is why I felt somewhat joyous when I realised that all of my appointments for the days ahead, which were set to surpass the 30-degree mark, were virtual and didn’t require a commute into a tourist-filled city.
Such was the extent of the disorganisation that I didn’t fully realise what I’d done until Monday morning when I turned on my computer, looked at my diary, instantly panicked about not having any London appointments and then saw the potential advantages of a week with a lot less required running around.
This year has had its challenges, personally, which have had a knock-on effect professionally and, as a result, I’ve been scrabbling over the past few months to try to make up for the two months I had to take off. I’ve paid penance for having my attention pointed away from work for an extended period by thinking about nothing else from the minute I wake up until the minute I go to sleep. If you’ve ever been in a similar situation, you’ll know this kind of mental effort can’t last long and feeling that the edges were fraying, I saw the openness of my diary as ‘permission’ to let go a bit.
I could have said ‘I decided to be kind to myself’ but that’s the kind of platitudinous garbage that proliferates my social media feeds and almost every guest pitch I receive for the podcast at the moment. It’s also, in addition to the ‘life stuff’ why I’m feeling a general sense of ennui about the podcast space in general. I used to finish recording a podcast and I’d have to do something with the energy I’d be brimming with because I had been so inspired by the conversation. I’d put on Enter Sandman by Metallica and pretend to be Lars Ulrich to air-drum out the excitement or I’d put on the Betablock3r Remix of Hands to Myself and let the slow crescendo funnel out the electricity I’d picked up from my guest.
As the podcast medium has gone from fringe to mainstream and the place where ‘everyone’s an expert’, it seems from my perspective as an interviewer, that the depth and insight offered by some of the people who want the ears of thousands of listeners is just a veneer. Often that veneer is the gift of the gab, good looks, lots of followers, and wealth or status but nothing that delivers much on further inspection, or indeed in an interview. When a guest performs a series of well-rehearsed sermons during our conversation, I know I’ve been ‘had’.
Rather than ‘be kind to myself’ I did what needed to be done, I gave myself a proverbial kick up the arse, which usually starts with a good clear-out and is, in my opinion, a better way to afford oneself kindness. In 30-degree heat, I excavated my office to within an inch of its life; if I hadn’t used, touched, looked at or needed something for a while then it was gone. Some might call it a declutter, others would call it a frenzied massacre but life on the other side of it felt, well, lighter.
Furthermore, I installed a routine. If I wasn’t clocking up steps pounding the pavement in London then I’d make time for a long walk every day. By ‘long’ I mean an hour with the latest episode of The News Agents, The Rest is Politics or So Bad it’s Good with Ryan Bailey.
I’ve made time to read and have devoured my friend Laura Kennedy’s book Some of Our Parts: Why We Are More Than The Labels We Live By and listened to my friend Duncan’s podcast pilot, which he sent me ages ago but I hadn’t got round to. I went for a walk around the local park with my friend Levanah and was off-loading about above ennui when she stopped me and said, ‘Do you think maybe you need to take a break?’ And that, dear reader, is when the penny dropped.
While a break is almost certainly on the horizon (just after the school holidays because I can’t go anywhere when it’s busy) this week has felt absolutely incredible. It has felt like a ‘de-load’ week, which is what I shall be calling these kinds of gear shifts moving forward and it is something I plan to deliberately factor into my diary next time.
‘De-load’ is something of a ‘fitness’ term but it’s essentially a week where you drop your weights and therefore the intensity of your strength training workouts to allow your body to optimally recover between sessions. You don’t stop working out, you just ease up a bit and while in the actual sense of the word it’s about the physical, this de-load week has been more of an exercise in mental de-loading.
I’m sure we can all relate to a brain that has too many tabs open or that sense of overwhelm but I think I’ve always believed that if I just think harder, work more, do more, am busier etc I’ll eventually reach a summit where I’ve ticked everything off my to-do and am at a nirvana of supreme efficiency where I have an endless capacity to achieve anything I want. Reader, have I just described The Matrix? Am I Neo? Obviously not, moving on…
In terms of vocabulary, I much prefer ‘de-loading’ to ‘being kind’ because I feel it implies that when we’re working, striving towards a goal or trying to make ends meet it somehow goes hand-in-hand with harming, which I don’t believe is true. I don’t believe we should tinge ambition, enterprise, aspiration and drive with anything negative but instead acknowledge the pace sometimes needs to slow because we are not machines that’ll stop at nothing to complete our tasks. Did I just describe The Terminator? Am I Arnold Schwarzenegger? Obviously not, moving on…
My de-load week might have happened by accident, but if you’re feeling overwhelmed, at boiling point, stretched too thin or any number of ways we can describe being at maximum capacity, I highly recommend you have one of your own.
Oooh I’m training for the Chicago marathon in October and this week was deload week and it literally translated to me being more kind to myself. I went to a wedding near Glastonbury yesterday and this morning instead of getting out about early running. I stayed in a luxurious hotel bed, drank coffee, did some writing, scrolled online, went down for breakfast and took my book! I have been a runner forever and I never made the connection between the two!!Thank you!! Also Neo and The Terminator 🤣🤣 dying.