I don't these days have ready access to enough energy to pursue a million things and catch them all as they fly. Alas the days of limitless ambition, limitless time and limitless energy with which to do it are gone. Its more about paring things back to what can reasonably be done in the time available. The drive to raise your game one more time becomes weaker as we get older. Because it dawns on you with greater clarity with the increasing tally of years, that there will never be sufficient time to follow up all those imagined things before you die. So lets not get into a flap or panic over it.
But oh we do, we do, we do, dear reader. For it's so easy to find oneself overwhelmed by the number and frequency of things that, at some point long forgotten, I've committed myself to doing. Not just doing, they should be completed too. No task ever abandoned or just left hanging, to reprimand you for your slack minded negligence. The expectations can be raised ridiculously high, so it would not be surprising were I to exhibit a tendency to be a little tense with persistent low level stress and an inconsistent sleep pattern.
I've rarely had sufficient time asleep as an adult. It's something even meditating regularly has largely left unaffected. Since the first lock down finished I've woken pretty much every night around 2am, often not for my usual reasons of bodily aches and pain, being too hot or needing to pee, but because my heart is pumping and I'm in a mildly alarmed emotional state. An open source sort of panic which, whilst it has no discernible origin, can latch onto any passing mild concern and give it a really good gnawing over.
One might say its a generalised pandemic anxiety, or existential angst. But that's too neat a diagnosis with no self-evident solution or ameliorating practice. As a literalistic Buddhist one might look at what arises, the internal and external conditions and try fiddling about with them. But causal conditioning factors are a complex weave, most of them are beyond conscious reach. Nevertheless they can be a starting point.
The summer trade has been very good, the shop having had another bumper month, October half- term being the last hurrah for the tourist trade. For the first time this year we've had difficulty keeping up with sales of items we make, which has brought its own emotional pressure. We've also been open seven days a week for the five months since the first lock down finished. Jnanasalin and I haven't had a day off together during that time. Individually we've taken days off, but it's all too easy for work to encroach nibbling away at what should be down time. As a consequence we can find ourselves switched on, but unable to locate the off switch. Financially we are currently in a stable position, our shop overheads are low and the government's grant has helped So we don't have the additional worry of financial pincers being applied to our testicles that some folk have.
The Winter months are our worst trading wise, so being in lock down over them could actually be fractionally better. Last year the run up to Christmas was depressed by the uncertainty over the Brexit stand off in Parliament and the General Election. Whether trade would have been better this year we'll never know now. For we will be in lock down, where further financial and health uncertainty will bedevil the confidence of the general public. The coming months will drive more people to master online purchasing and put a significant further nail in the coffin of High Street retailing. I imagine some shops in Sheringham will not be re-opening in 2021, we'll find out which soon enough in early Spring.
I was not looking forward to the encroaching slower Winter months I felt a degree of dread. Steeling myself to be in the cold wind of a frequently empty courtyard, which can lead to a stiffening of the emotions with notable stoical strain. Too much time can sit just as heavily as not enough. In Winter, and more generally, this aspect of our shop can be difficult to be thereeasy with, it is a practice but its one I currently have insufficient mastery of. In some respects it is not the abundance or scarcity of time that is the problem, but the deflated fatigue of emotions and will that result in insufficient volition to do anything. At some point I hit the buffers of despondency.
A not so busy shop, or stay at home in lock down, I know which one I'd chose. Both mean we'll have time and space to catch up with ourselves a bit, take time off together again, and those things we never quite get around to when the shop was open all week. Our making usually becomes speedier and more productive too, so there are some silver linings. We also have some stock updating to do to our website, and linking our web and shop stock together by using the same payment platform.
Come mid January we close for 3-4 weeks anyway because by then there is literally nothing happening but the twiddling of our thumbs. We'll take a holiday if that is possible, start planning developments for the business and hope that by sometime in 2021 this pandemic will have turned a decisive corner.
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