I turn everything into homework.

To wit: I’ve been compiling podcasts like it’s my job and the rent’s due tonight. One show leads to another, and before I know it (and right now) I’ve got a year’s worth of listening on my phone. Last I checked, podcasts are not something I have to do. But ever since discovering them back in 2015 (thank you, Serial), I’ve committed myself to a growing list of hosts and subject matter, dutifully listening according to their weekly or fortnightly schedule, anxiety growing within me when I can’t find the time for a latest episode.

Podcasts are supposed to be for enjoyment. And I do enjoy them! I also listen to some because I feel obligated to finish them, as if the host’s feelings will be hurt if I don’t, or some Podcast Overseer is grading my completion rate. I turn everything into homework–into a marker of productivity, which is just so upside-down because I’ve recently realised that the more I listen, the less I think, and the more my imagination slowly dies. Which, I think, is a call to some sort of balance. Which I’ll get to right after I figure out what happened to the princes in the tower. In 1483.

There’s also this: the weather is warming up (finally; for now) here in Sydney, which means Christmas is approaching, which is an upside-down fact that I’m weirdly becoming used to. Which also means that I’m feeling an urge to curate lists: lists of Christmas music to listen to, movies to watch, activities to book, presents to buy. Ways to turn Christmas into homework. Methods of converting Randy and Cousin Eddie into cogs in a machine. The shitter is so full.

The best things, though, seem to happen without my help at all: the way the jacarandas are finally bursting forth in their purple glory; the way the sea carries bobs me around gently when, after finishing a swim (productivity alert!), I lie on my back and float; the way Kevin the Dog makes a perfect footrest when I decide to sit still. The other day I had to shave a kilometre off my run (#hippain) and grew frantic over whether this would lead to the collapse of my fitness regimen, and guess what happened? Nothing.

In fact, nothing seems to often be the circumstance in which some of the best things happen. So in between moments of movement, I’m looking for opportunities to be still. To, as a therapist I follow on Twitter says, witness rather than react. To listen in the quiet spaces and watch the glorious burst forth without any help from me.