Post Season Paradox

READING TIME: 5 MINUTES.

Between adventures. A seasonaires plight and joy.

There’s an oversized design book on my non-existent coffee table called “Outsiders”. It’s gorgeously inspirational with it’s hyper edited calligraphed text, double-spread nature scenery imagery and tactucally addictive thick recycled paper. Not to become too ‘meta’ but the book exists in a paradoxically dualist state. The justification for its existence, a decorative domestic item, is, by definition, the opposite of what its content advocates.

I feel like that book. Often.
Not, thick and recycled, but in opposition to myself.

A different kind of seasonal depression - Momentum lost

I have lived a season to season, exploratory road trip to adventure, remote project to project - life for almost 20 years now. Much of my physical setting, social system, professional demands, where my cat lives changes every 3 to 5 months or so. (Obviously featuring some returning scenery and starring cast members.)

Not to worry, this is not a “the grass is always greener” sermon. The benefits and pitfalls of a life defined by stability and consistency vs one tending heavier on the side of creative reinvention and exploration are well discussed. Some form of balance between order and chaos is obviously key, albeit, exactly where on the scale we live comfortably, is not only forever a moving target but a matter of highly individual predisposition, personal history and circumstance. At any given point I can only wish for anyone to bravely stumble towards just the right, momentary balancing point of their lives with the confidence of a four year old in a batman costume.

Personally, I relish the fact that my friends often euphorically greet me on the phone with the words: “daaaaarling, where in the world are you right now?” ...proceeded by general life updates and reassurances of wanting to see each other again soon. I marvel at the progress they make within their relatively steady lives and careers and couldn’t be more invested in my friends ingenious ways to find adventure within that very life. I particularly enjoy re-appearing in places and gently being lowered into the latest pool of local gossip. It makes me feel included and the time I’ve spent investing into places and people well reciprocated.

However, with this high volume of circumstantial change I find myself, once again, in the grips of a different kind of seasonal depression. The constant loss of momentum. Imagine working on a highly complex and notoriously difficult project on your computer, but you find no flow, because you’re interrupted by updating software or an overheating hard-drive. Or you’re working from home and your toddler keeps waltzing in demanding tacos. Now extend that timeframe to trying to focus over the course of a year, and you get the idea.

Unless you’re some kind of tunnel vision savant who’s immune to external matter, you can’t, I certainly can’t, build incrementally progressive, sustainable momentum. The bedrock to a lot of big life projects. Instead, it’s stop-and-go, hurry-up-and-wait, same- sh**-different-...everything:

All seasonaires, remote project workers, cruise ship employees, military, film crew members, oil rig engineers, hell, even college students, know the feeling:

The post season crash

The big re-set.
The absolute mess that is the time “in-between”.
The doing of the very opposite of what should be rest and recovery.

Whilst in the throws of a season, a project, or a journey I imagine the time off ahead like the messiah is coming, picturing myself peacefully and joyfully hacking away at all the things I had to put on the back burner. From getting my financial affairs in order, to cooking healthy meals, to starting a stretchy yoga routine on dewy early mornings...

Miserably though, after the “end-of- season party” hangover subsides and the promised land of extended free time lays before me, depression, and a vicious come-down from a permanent adrenaline high that’s akin to rehab detox, awaits.

Here are (some of) the things to be dealt with when no-one’s looking:

• unpacking and packing, settling into a new/old/yet another apartment or accommodation. Not one bag or two, but instead a full mini household move every time. 

• cleaning and putting away last seasons gear • cleaning and setting up the new seasons gear • cleaning things in general, if unlucky, previous tenants dirt, which is the grossest of all dirts. other people’s.

• relentless laundry cycles and more (un)packing and (re)setting everyday essentials.

• if home, talking extensively to the cacti, thanking them for not dying and over- fertilising them in a frenzy.

• removing actual, literal cobwebs from corners and telling Steve the spider to go make himself comfortable elsewhere.

• domestic decorations whether it be Christmas lights, easter dried flowers, or autumn harvest leafs notoriously being out of season (at home), or non-existent (dorm rooms, shared houses, rental vans). No nest building here.

• staring down the business end of a persistently overstretched budget due to delayed payments, unforeseen travel costs, bureaucracy not being fully digitised and worst of all: the limited availability before getting back on the road, expedites repair/maintenance deadlines, making everything reliably more expensive. (It’s a running joke in my family that my existence is held together by duct tape and good graces..from ripped down jackets, to ceiling lights.)

Once the initial dust has settled of departure and/or arrival, phase 2, hits...badly:

• abrupt loss of social environment and acute loneliness.

• all consuming restlessness, thanks to the addictive qualities of heightened adrenaline, seratonine, dopamine, all the -ine’s. Physically, mentally, emotionally I feel equally exhausted and unable to rest.

• for women: hormonal cycle mayhem

• pimples and digestive issues from the sudden change of diet

• the difficulty of settling into a new, or any daily rhythm whatsoever.

• simmering self hatred over the fact that I should know better by now.

• an existential questioning of life choices

• wanting to be left alone and around people at the same time.

• feeling equally uninspired and overwhelmed by opportunity 

• a constant nagging inner voice that whatever I am currently doing is wrong, and I should be doing something else 

• deep sadness on all that I miss out on, such as friends, siblings, or even a steady working relationship with the local gym.

Sidebar: The singular thing I seem to be able to adjust seamlessly to is hanging out with my cat (if she was staying with someone else), which once more speaks to the truly magical powers of animals, but that’s for another piece.

The joy

The post season paradox of needing to recharge but also reorganise is genuinely one of the shittiest phases of non-permanent employment/location life. It’s part of the dirty work keeping the dream propped up on legs about as steady as that of a new born foal. It’s the time I set aside to “sort myself out”, to “really focus this time”, to “get it together already”...Yet somehow I end up in a mud puddle by the river, digging a damn like I used to when I was a kid. There is also the sheer joy of making this the time to write down all the craziest dreams and goals, to over-plan and overthink, to daydream of far-flung places and wild work options, and often setting those ideas in motion.

Whilst play time is vital, especially for a relentless thinker and feeler like myself, it is soundtracked by a highly negative, judgemental, nagging inner voice for every minute not spent in deep, focused work. In “What I talk about when I talk about running” Haruki Murakami writes about the grindstone like character of living a life in creation. How the dedication to being a creative, whilst often not being a choice, but an innate necessity in the creative herself, should be taxing physically as well as mentally, because a steady rhythm of hard work is the only way to create more than we consume, which in turn, is the key to a good life.

The post season paradox of not being able to use time efficiently when you have the most of it, is the same as the paradox of discipline being the key to mental liberation, hard work the key to freedom of choice or, having to let yourself sink first, before softly floating to the surface during the drown-proofing drill of the Marines.

Sometimes I make it work, sometimes I don’t. Each time, without fail, even though I know it’s coming, even though I have scheduled down time, work time and play time... I never seem to be able to rest&recover when I need it the most.

It continues to take me by surprise.
Maybe because that, in essence, is the joy of adventure life.

You never see it coming.