The Habit of Paddling

Rambling thoughts after tidying my workspace.

Do you ever notice that you’re living on the surface of things?

Sometimes I find myself falling back into old habits. I build a carefully stacked collage on my desk, interwoven layers of ephemera I have plans for but not the time. My chair becomes a bundle of the coats in my current wardrobe rotation, my bedside a cluster of glasses I’ll do in the morning. I slip around the house in the early hours, taking sips of coffee while I work on something more imminently pressing, the encroaching mess around me hovering, ready to pounce the minute I allow myself to sit down or stop. If I keep on my toes, bouncing between a hundred to-do lists, it won’t catch me. Yet.

I used to always feel this with houses, or friends - I loved to paddle, let the warm waters of early days lap around my ankles - but the ability to truly commit, to sink my feet into the gritty pond floor, push off and swim, always seemed to escape me. It was the same when I was a kid, realising very young that it was best not to get balloons…I’d make an attachment too big and too fast, so it was best just not to get them in the first place. Easier to avoid the inevitable sadness at their bursting, deflation or accidentally being let go of altogether. And it is sort of similar with tidying. It’s just so easy to place things in temporary housing, everything organised ‘for now,’ rather than double down with the permanence of drilling shelves into walls, or committing to finally sorting through that collection of odd bits and ends that build up in the bottom of tote bags. To commit means to get attached.