How much can you carry alone? 💌

Notes on the pressure of doing all the things.

‘That’s pretty heavy. How will you manage?’ She asked me doubtfully across the side table that was now mine. My purchase physically separated me from them as they leaned on one another, tucked into each other with familiar ease, framed by the doorway of their home.

‘I’ll figure it out,’ I said, adjusting my backpack and rolling up my sleeves. We said our ‘buen días’ and I returned to the burning heat of the Barcelona day and onto one of the busiest streets in Europe with the table under my arms.

I proceeded to carry it the length of La Rambla and all the way home, dodging motorbikes, curious looks, electric scooters (for the love of god can we ban them already?!), too many tourists and generous amounts of actual crap as I went.

When I wrote a few weeks ago about the physical tests of building a home in this city I am beside myself to call home, I detailed how affirming it was to see my body in action through necessity; how in awe of it I was. But unlike a lot of the mental marathons we run ourselves through, there’s a very tangible ceiling to the weight you can carry in your arms. It is a matter of physics, and therefore you can likely accept it, unless you’re a WWE wrestler or perhaps stuck trying to open that jar of jam when you should have left the house five minutes ago.   

The ceiling in our minds is a little more complicated. It theoretically doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t limits to how much it should be loaded, or filled up. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t sometimes suffer under the weight of the modern world; under our designs of what it means to be a successful human, under the consequences of working too much, or caring too much, or the effects of a break up or health concerns or grief or just feeling like life is a lot - even when and especially when you know how much you have and how your silly little problems are in fact not problems at all. 

“There are at least a billion people on earth at this moment who would consider their prayers answered if they could trade places with you.”

Sam Harris

But while the mind can and arguably should be trained to expand, it can also be stretched too far. Evidence of the health consequences of our modern lifestyles would support this. Constantly on, constantly whirring, constantly connecting, constantly suddenly remembering we should have replied to that message three weeks ago, booked that appointment while shaving our legs as we remember to pick up more toothpaste and check in on friends who are going through their own struggles.

We don’t have to be all of the things, all of the time, but on a day-to-day basis as someone who walks through this life pretty independently I do feel it, and the weight of the combination of life’s necessities, obligations, decisions, desires and mundane frustrations means that I lately have very much hit the ceiling in my mind. I have burned myself out while simultaneously being forced to cut myself off from the things that make this life so meaningful. The very things I work for in the first place. The very things that fill up my cup when all of life’s demands collide.

I posted a garbled Story on Instagram about these feelings of overwhelm, and the response was such that I am currently exploring it further in a bid, as always, to connect a few dots for anyone out there nodding in accordance. These pressures are far from unique to me, but the loneliness I have felt with them assures me that it’s worth some out-loud articulation. Writing helps me to process, and if through that I can help someone else well, here we are. 

Mercifully and magically there is now, finally, some very clear relief - for the first time this year if I’m honest with myself. I’ll get into the whys and wheres of it all another day, but as I dig through the past few months, I’m not afraid to say that there is also some shame. Firstly because it all still sounds and feels rather pathetic, even as I work on writing it down from the other side, having slept more this week than the previous two weeks combined. But also because the very essence of this life I have built, and indeed this Substack you are reading, toots its horn about embracing exactly the opposite. About the value of carving a slower, more meaningful, more playful life that works to your own beat as much as possible alongside its inevitable demands.

It will be a surprise to no-one that this recent experience is not my first. But in response I have very much tried to course-correct, steadily carving a life by design to ensure I don’t land back there. Indeed, part of what I adore about Spain is the simplicity I find here - the slower pace, the contentment its people get from letting life do its thing. So to be aware of getting dragged back to a place where I lose my ability to be present, in a constant state of adrenalin-fuelled survival mode, waking up with my brain full and my heart pounding, working late into the night and at weekends, on trains and buses while cancelling everything around me just to Get. It. All. Done… I abhor it. It goes against everything I’ve worked for. 

But the fact is I have to take work when it’s there, to allow for the periods when it’s not. I don’t like to rely on one client, in order to stay as multi-skilled (and employable) as possible, but also because through Covid it almost cost me my livelihood for a minute. Moreover, shame is a deviant that helps absolutely no-one, and burnout is very real, although I am entirely loathe to self-diagnose it. And while I might be well aware that the pleasures of life are in the simplest of things, creating space for them isn’t always easy among the pressures of being a human, which for me has meant that for the guts of 2024, having changed my life and built this home so lovingly, within its walls I’ve crumbled a little (a lot) under the combination of navigating those pressures, obligations, creative projects, mundane stressors - and triumphs - with only one pair of shoulders to take the weight, excluded from any of the familiar ease or light relief you so need at these points to get you through. With only one brain to make decisions from, whether that be creatively, who to call about the broken boiler, or what to eat for dinner.

I’m sat here on the other side of what was always going to be temporary situation, but nonetheless one that went on for far too long, and one that I’m still feeling the physical and emotional effects of even though I now have room to get my work done in daylight hours, to think and write and pick up my Spanish lessons again, to nurture new relationships - and my health - again. I can zoom out and very clearly see how not alone I am, and how none of this really matters anyway. But overwhelm, prolonged mental exhaustion and detachment are so very real, and as such we really do need to take care as we beetle about this earth carrying more than the human species was ever designed to carry. 

So while I ponder and decompress and explore a little longer, this is just to say, if you feel it too (and the Instagram responses suggest many of you do), that I see you. I see the tables you were happy to lift alone across town until someone else questioned it. I see you doing your best to navigate a world designed for two. I see the emotional tax you pay for not settling. I see the effort it takes to ask yourself hard questions in order to try and better yourself - even if the result is a life that you’re well aware many people could only dream of. I see you not able to ask yourself any kind of questions at all because you’re too exhausted to even figure out what to wear today. I see the invoices you’re repeatedly chasing to get the rent paid and the appointments you’re constantly attending, the silence within your walls or the deafening noise of not even being able to drink a cup of coffee without a pair of little hands reaching at you. I see you feeling guilty for feeling it at all. I see the concern of saving for a future that isn’t guaranteed while knowing the importance of enjoying the present, the numerous plates you spin and the endless hats you wear. I see you if you’ve found yourself flying solo through this life, literally or mentally, despite the best of intentions and the most open of hearts. And if you’re crushingly lonely because you’re walking through life with the wrong kind of person, I see you too. 

To this I say that while you can keep reminding yourself that it’s not forever, it’s also ok to slow down in other places - the places that you can - to take some of the pressure off. It’s ok to ask for more time, or to ask for help. It’s ok to reach out to rant, or just to send a silly meme because that’s all you have the capacity for right now. You’ve got nothing to prove and everything to lose, health-wise at least, if you keep going for too long. Most of all, give yourself the grace that you’re doing your best, and don’t shame yourself for ‘not being able to handle it’. Because while we can and do carry so much alone, it absolutely doesn’t mean that we should.