Finding Joy in Unaccomplishment

and by that, I meant contentment

Photo by Ram Kishor on Unsplash

It is past 6:00 on Saturday evening and there is still enough light to get another half hour at least of yard work done.

I've been out here off and on since about 4:00 this afternoon, first finding a place to set some succulents my mom gave me last week and then, after a short break, mowing the lawn and then moving around to the backyard to pull some weeds see if I can figure out my ineffective compost pile and pull some more weeds.

This morning, I went to the park with some friends, my husband, and my boys. I took a seven-layer bean dip I’d prepped yesterday evening and finished this morning as well as some cupcakes I baked. I feel unaccomplished.

I've spent more time doing yard work and baking this past week than I have spent working, and by working I mean writing and editing.

I feel unaccomplished and surprisingly content.

From a young age, my belief—due to a variety of influences—was that time was short and everything done had to be toward a single focus. If it was not toward that focus, it was not worthwhile.

So I spent years trying to do what I could to work towards some singular focus, some time that I feared was going to come upon me like a thief in the night and prove that I had not done enough and so I was always doing, always working.

Strangely enough, the years I spent most devoted to that are the years I look back on now as seeming surprisingly worthless. Perhaps it is not really that way. I’m sure I learned much and definitely experienced much …

But today, yesterday, in the past few days, I have simply been working with my hands to do very simple tasks—bake a pie, prepare a meal, set plants in the soil, prune back a tree, take a break to let cat hop on my lap and feel its contented purring beneath me.

Even after those years I spent dedicated to a singular cause, I felt, for the past decade or more, the need to catch up, to make up for lost time, to go to school and earn a degree, to write and publish, to show myself as good enough, as worthy of some place, some thing, some belonging.