Life as a Sine Wave

I guess I need to just accept the fact that my life is a sine wave.

I’ve known for a long time that I tend to go through a down period after finishing a big project. And I learned after grad school, that the longer or more intense the event, project or experience, the longer and deeper the down phase.

“Normal” projects like recitals, concerts, finishing a composition or web project, taking a weekend workshop, or going on a business trip, the usually down time is a day or two.

So after finishing my graduate degree a couple of years ago – a seven year project – I figured I’d be generous and give myself a whole month to recuperate. Then, I figured, I’d bounce back and get on with my new leisure life as a non-student, filling my time writing music and being a church organist.

Nice plan in theory. In reality, however, the down time lasted all summer. And somehow by mid-August, I’d filled my plate full of outside commitments and it was already time for the school year to start!

Even though it was a good, productive year – won lots of composition contests, wrote a couple of commissioned pieces, performed in several concerts, made a few business trips to hear my pieces performed, completed a six-month coach training course and went on a 10-day mission trip to Lithuania – the year was so busy, I had no real down time between projects.

And I didn’t even realize what had happened until the next August, when I was ready for summer – i.e. ready to go to the pool, enjoy a less busy schedule and work on some projects of my own – and “woke up” to realize that my summer was gone and that I’d spent it in a sort of unconscious haze.

And that at this point, the only thing left to do was grab a hold of the merry-go-round and start another equally, if not more busy school year than the last.

Finally, May 17, I checked the last thing off my list from this horrendously busy year then took a couple of “conscious” days off. After a weekend workshop in Atlanta where I had some major “aha’s,” I came back on Monday to begin a semi-conscious post partum down time.

I say “semi-conscious” because even though I’m aware of this down pattern, I still did not really plan time for it. In the last weeks of the busy-ness of the semester, as things were winding down, I scheduled all my summer projects, giving due dates, assigning specific days to work on each one, and even noting the specific number of hours to work on each project. My rationale was that since these “project hours” only added up to 15 or so hours each week, so I’d be able to easily work in my down time around them.

Again, a nice plan in theory. In reality, though, the strategy is not working.

Seems my body and my energy levels – physically, mentally and emotionally – have their own plan, and the past 10 days I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping, playing with my kitten and just sitting….

Last night I was talking with a friend I hadn’t seen since April. We were catching each other up on what we’d been doing and I realized that I was really embarrassed about not having worked much on the five projects I’d scheduled myself to be working on these past two weeks – a couple of which should have already been finished!

When he said, “oh, you’ve just been hanging around” like it was no big deal and a perfectly natural thing to do after a long busy time, I realized what I’d been doing to myself….

Over the last two weeks, I’d been becoming more and more antsy about potentially “wasting” another summer and I’d been berating myself for getting further and further behind on my projects!

Feeling like I’ve been catapulted out of a fast moving car and thrown onto the side of a cliff, hanging on by my fingernails, but sliding down slowly, slowly into dark canyon…. I’d been worrying about what to DO: Do I try to climb back up? Or do I let go? If I let go will I fly? Or will I just fall faster? And trying desperately to figure out a way NOT to get back on that merry-go-round in August!

His words were a reminder to give myself time to just BE….. instead of fighting it.

A poster on my wall says…

Stop sinking… change your way of thinking.

Maybe I’ll go back to my project list and pick out five things to work on during the whole summer! (instead of five in two weeks!)

For now though, I think I’ll go play with my kitty cat and maybe take a “regroup” nap before I move on to something else….

Here’s to continuing the Journey… finding out the hard way about energy cycles and sine waves… and learning – slowly – how to just ‘hang’ and BE!

-Becky