I Did Not Sign Up for This!

Photo Cred: Francesco Moretti

I started off my Dream Forum journey excited about finally getting my dream off the ground. I’d been teaching time management workshops for a few years here and there, but it took the global pandemic screeching my musical touring to a halt for me to be able to bring this beloved endeavor to the front burner. Well, to a front burner anyway, since the life of a freelancer always has at least two of those going at any given moment. Finally, I thought, I was going to have an excuse to prioritize this project – accountability, homework, a community of mutual support – it was time to get cracking and move this thing forward! I was pumped. 

But turns out God had other plans for me. One of the first things David Kim said to us was that while this can be thought of as a type of “accelerator program,” it might very well function as a decelerator, if we let it. Through his words I felt God calling me to slow down, and to allow him to move me through this at his own pace. “Yes, Lord, let’s slow down,” I thought, “use this time to teach me how to rest in you; that’s what I need, and not to worry about deadlines and outcomes. I’m all about this!” And I was all about it, at least for a while. But much like my students’ parents, who love the idea of their children becoming interested (but not too interested) in music, I let myself get into the restful mindset, but you know, within reason, after all, we were ultimately here to move our dreams forward, right?

The magnitude of the deceleration that gripped my life over the following months is something I’m still reckoning with.

The magnitude of the deceleration that gripped my life over the following months is something I’m still reckoning with. To start, we began the program during the darkest part of winter, a season that visits me with Seasonal Affective Disorder every year – the darkness often feels as though it’s physically smothering me, and getting out of bed in the morning is a much slower and more difficult process. This was also my first winter living completely alone, and to top it off, my apartment, though cozy and beautiful, presented me with a pest control problem that had me regularly in tears. Add to that an ongoing struggle to acclimate to new medications for a chronic condition, and I spent a good bit of the program lying in bed; sleeping, or just lying there – too tired, nauseated, in pain or upset to get anything done. It felt so wrong to let this precious time slip through my fingers like this! I felt shame and guilt for wasting what I had been given.

I had not signed up for this, for this kind of slowing down! I had also not signed up for periods where so many external demands were being made on my time that I was hardly able to keep up. I felt God pushing me to a sort of breaking point, where I could forget about getting anything done and count myself lucky if I managed the basics of daily life. The irony of the self-described time management expert struggling with her own time management was not lost on me. 

But then something shifted – God sent me a new invitation, this time to accept my current reality, just as it was, rather than resist it. With funding from the Dream Forum I had enrolled in a course from the Center for Mindful Self Compassion, so as to deepen my understanding of this core tenet of my approach to time management. During our many sessions, we learned to allow whatever we were experiencing to surface, and to hold those emotions and sensations compassionately, like one holds a beloved child when they have a fever. We don’t hold the child in order to make the fever go away, but just because they are suffering. This nascent ability to give myself kindness opened the door for me to accept that things weren’t going the way I’d hoped, and that was actually ok. This slowing down was hard – winter is hard, illness is hard, roaches are awful, and SAD makes everything extra difficult. It’s all so hard, and you’re doing the best you can, I told myself. You are here, trying, and that’s not nothing!

I realized that I was not generating that kindness out of thin air, rather, I was becoming a more open vessel for God’s love to flow freely.

As I channelled kindness towards my hurting self, I realized that I was not generating that kindness out of thin air, rather, I was becoming a more open vessel for God’s love to flow freely. It may seem convoluted to have “me” be both the subject and object of that soothing presence, but in those moments, the experience made perfect sense.

And now, as spring is finally digging me out of my winter blues, and aspects of my health begin to improve, I look back on those months of darkness and realize that this rough ride made sense, in its own way; we even spoke about this during one of the Dream Pod sessions, talking through the role of brokenness in calling forth our dreams. As far as I had been concerned, I’d already memorized my story of “walking-disaster-to-time-management-master,” the very story that got me excited to share the strategies I’d learned in the first place. But that story inconveniently insists on unfolding. I find myself going through new valleys of struggle, even as I’d hoped to be selling folks a finished product, complete with infomercial-like “before and after” shots. I now see that God’s invitation to accept the reality of this process is him bringing about the compassionate time management culture I dream of for our world. I had been preaching self compassion, and rightfully so, but never had I had such need for it myself!

Through this time of slowing to a crawl, I paradoxically did a lot of living, and learned some invaluable lessons. I learned to better accept my limitations and needs, and to let myself rely on my loving community for help; I learned to become the squeaky wheel that gets the exterminator appointments, and I learned to sit with frustrated plans and validate the feelings they elicit. I also learned that I’m not done learning, never will be, and that doesn’t have to stand in the way of my sharing what I’ve figured out so far, as dispatches from the journey. God is with me in it, and is calling forth compassion and kindness in his world, even through my seemingly mundane struggles. 

Anne Boccato is a musician and one of eight Dream Pod Members in Goldenwood’s 2022 Dream Forum. This reflection is part of Goldenwood’s #InsidetheDreamPod series.

About Anne’s dream, The Freedom Framework: My dream is to champion a compassionate approach to time management that pushes back against our culture of toxic productivity. We in the west have come to live by a myth that equates hard work with heartless drive, and says that self-compassion breeds complacency and mediocrity; pushing us to live unsustainable lives spurred by shame and fear of failure. What if, instead, we were taught to validate our own emotions and experiences, shed the “lazy” label, and shepherd our own inner children towards what is most life-giving, wise and fulfilling in the long run? I dream of helping people manage their time wisely in order to live happy, balanced lives that fit their needs, goals and personalities. Contact me at: email@anneboccato.com