It is Monday night, and I left work on time, which was nice. The point of leaving work on time, apart from being there for the kids while Richard does his Scout group, is to spend at least two hours practicing my violin. Only, I didn’t; because I couldn’t be bothered.
It seems to be the defining feature of this year. Last year, I was all about all the stuff. Make goals, drive harder, run faster, row more, beat some PBs, get a pay rise, build a team. It was a clean sweep, with fastest half marathon, exceeded my weight loss goals by several kilos, practiced my violin every day, had huge success at work.
And this year…I just make more hot drinks and sit on the sofa watching Star Trek episodes from 1968. I buy books called The Upside of Stress, which like all such books make the same point 200 times with different examples. I attend management courses which just make me feel a failure. I go on work trips and return empty-handed, with no agendas progressed and no big wins booked.
All my goals seem futile really. I don’t know what epiphany exactly I was chasing. One day, I would maybe write a book, I thought. I would mean something, contribute something other than a salary. But I don’t. I issue cash for the kids’ activities, that’s kind of it, that’s what I am for. I don’t get to watch them do these activities, I just know that they happen, guided by the unseen hand of my husband. I took my youngest to school last week due to some mix-up with what she wanted to do (have more breakfast or leave), and when I arrived, Richard was waiting for me, having dropped the boys off first. It had transpired on the way to school that it was in fact non-uniform day, which Richard had also belatedly worked out. I parked my bike next to his by the school gate, and said something like “let’s work out a plan” because I didn’t want to keep talking about it in front of our wailing child. Ingrid clung to his legs, seemingly appealing for him to fix it after Mummy had somehow failed. He disappeared, wordlessly. I couldn’t see him, and Ingrid had run off to join the class procession into school. I stood by the bikes, slightly in the way, wondering where he had gone. Eventually I realised he was at the other end of the playground, talking to the teacher and arranging the logistics of getting Ingrid the right outfit.
We rode back home, I logged onto my laptop, and he dropped off a dress.
I suppose it’s these trivial things that make me feel stupid. I try to be part of their lives, and I am not. I know other mothers, but not the way they know each other, with their daily coffee mornings and holidays. I buy food, and spend the weekends cooking for them, but I almost never eat with them. I don’t know their friends, or their friends’ parents. Soon they will be in secondary school, and there won’t even be any opportunity to get to know people. I can’t sit by the hockey rink twice a week, because I already cut corners with my working days, leaving too early to be taken seriously, feeling a bit inadequate for the American work ethic.
There is no perfection to anyone’s life, and I never expected any of my life. I’m quite happy to watch and listen to people who have indeed perfected music or ballet, feel inspired in my own way, and feel great satisfaction with merely playing a piece marginally better every 100 hours or so. And yet now all of a sudden, it’s as if it’s all a waste of time, as if I feel nothing, have no interest in art, no appreciation of culture; why bother, when I myself have nothing to contribute. What do I know about Beethoven, if I can’t play it. What’s the point in running, if I will never win anything. I suddenly don’t want to take part on my own terms any more. I want to retreat, and retire, and read, and eat. Oh, eating. There are so many things to eat. Hotel Chocolat, a shop I must enter. Another piece of pizza, it will surely unlock an Open Sesame of insights, the feeling of the too-hot cheese on my tongue, letting it slip down my throat as fast as possible, because it’s better burning my throat than my tongue.
I think all day about food, and not about all my exercise plans, or holidays, or where I want to go at the weekend. I seem to exist from meal time to meal time, from one snacking opportunity to the next. I go to sleep thinking about what I could make for breakfast. Maybe it is the only thing that is in fact achievable. The basic functions of life, just eating and existing. I feel in a strange sort of autumn, somewhat defectively on hold until some kind of upgrade defrags the disk and lets me move faster and with fewer rabbit holes I grind to a halt on.
Here is a short Rilke poem to epitomise the feeling of finality.
Herbsttag
Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben
It’s basically about things moving on in Autumn, finishing the good things, packing up and battening down the hatches. Nothing will change for some time.
The resting writer 
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