Seasonal restlessness
I keep planning to do things around the house, or out of the house, and the weather keeps being shit and unpredictable as it so often is in spring and I pretend to be mad about all the things I can’t do because of the rain but I’m not really that mad. I’ve got a hot cup of nespresso coffee with foamed milk and a kindle with some top-notch cosy fantasy on it and a dog who thinks I’m the greatest thing that ever walked this earth, what call do I have to be mad about stalled intentions? Now that I have a garden I find myself saying “at least my garden will be happy” whenever it rains like every person with a garden has always said and that’s ok, I’m fine with being part of this club.
At least that’s what I tell myself, and sometimes even believe, but the rest of the time I’m filled with a restlessness that goes beyond being cooped up inside because of the rain. I’m restless when it’s sunny too, or merely cloudy, which leads me to think it’s unrelated to the weather, but I do believe it’s seasonal. You ever get that feeling when the shroud of winter is leaving and you know the expanse of summer is ahead of you? You’re itching to travel to some place in Europe that has castles or take up lindy hop again or dye your hair or organise a gingham picnic on the beach or go on some dates with people who may or may not pretend to be interested.
It’s more intense this year though, my seasonal restlessness. I’ve been laid low, snowed under, simply not myself for the last couple of years, and now that I’m coming out of my own personal winter the restlessness is strong. I lost my spark in 2022 and for so long I wasn’t even sure if I still had one. I figured I probably did because what happened to me wasn’t that bad, not bad enough to kill a spark forever, but I was just so tired and it’s hard to do anything beyond survive in that state. Also nothing even really happened to me, that sort of implies someone did something and no one did, it’s just that I had this foot injury and it’s taken an eternity to recover from, or at least it felt like it. The thing about not being able to walk for months is that you lose any fitness you may have had, and I didn’t have much in the first place, and as an added bonus you also go out of your mind with boredom because you’re stuck at home on the couch with your leg in a godforsaken cast, and then you find out it’s a permanent disability although the actual symptom of it fluctuates and you start to feel old. Really old. Prematurely so.
I’m still in my thirties, goddamn, I’m too young to feel this old. I kept telling myself that but knowing something and doing something about it aren’t siblings or even cousins, they’re like a couple of people who were in the same class in college once and can’t remember each other’s names.
Except then, they bump into each other randomly in the street and decide to go for coffee? I’m stretching the metaphor here but it’s just that I did finally do something about feeling old and tired and the details don’t matter so much, what matters is that it’s working, and I’ve been coming back to life. I feel more myself again in the last few months than I have in the last few years. I can actually walk and dance again and I’ve been getting good sleep. Oh and I also bought a house which I’ll write more about soon.
Now I have a new problem which is that all the people who know me know me as someone who doesn’t go out much but now I want to go out? Now I want to be invited to things but I’m not being invited? It’s one thing being the inviter but I also want to be the invitee. I want to be the popular girl who people just want to have around but I’ve never been the popular girl and that’s not about to start now. I guess I need to spread the word that I’m open for social business.
When you find your spark again you don’t always know what that’s going to mean. I borrowed a guitar from a friend a few days ago because I felt like I wanted to play music again, to learn Strawberry Wine by Noah Kahan and Doomsday by Lizzy McAlpine which isn’t enough to justify buying my own guitar. I also bought the piano sheet music for Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo even though it’s a deceptively hard song to sing and I can’t really pull it off but I’m obsessed with it so why not? I already had the piano. I started writing a new novel because my last one is really giving me the shits even though I love it. I go to the gym most days. I started going to dance class on Saturday mornings with my friend again. I inadvertently got a crush on someone and it’s faded already thank god because limerence is no fun, but it was nice just to know I could feel some way about a person again. It’s been so long since I did. I signed up to do another degree in Spanish even though I already have two jobs. It’s part-time of course, and not as impulsive as I’m making it sound, but still outrageous. I did impulsively get my ears pierced multiple times from a place in the mall because mine closed up from not wearing earrings for a few years and I got extra while I was at it.
Now I have energy again I’m frustrated at being stuck in my house on a rainy day, and spending my one wild and precious life in a job that I only like on some days, and most of all at being stuck in this country that bores the hell out of me. I never planned to spend my life in New Zealand but I was an idiot and had a baby young and then divorced his father so I’m stuck in shared custody limbo until he leaves home. Anyway, what am I going to do then—move to the other side of the world from my only child and all the friends I’ve made and networks I’ve built over the last 15 years? Seems unlikely, though I say that’s what I want to do. I say I want to live in Melbourne or London or New York or Barcelona or maybe a small village somewhere though I don’t know how you find a village to live in. My restlessness would have me anywhere but here but that’s easy to say when it’s all academic. I hope that it’s seasonal and won’t be here for a long time. If I could have the spark back without the disquiet that would be preferable.
Restlessness is akin to dissatisfaction and I’m not discontent with most of my life, not really. Some days my gratitude for everything I have threatens to leak out my eyes. But I want more. If I was being critical I’d accuse myself of never being able to be fully happy like it’s a character flaw instead of optimism, but I’m done with being critical of myself. So I admit it, I want more sunshine, more music and dance, more unexpected encounters and strangeness and laughter and shocks to my comfort zone. More connection. An old flatmate once told me my writing was too needy and I get that, because I am needy. Always wanting more. After she told me that I wrote a piece about the man I was sleeping with twitching in his sleep and how I got up to eat cold pizza and that piece she approved of.
Some days I want to live in a small apartment by myself in a barrio in Spain that doesn’t even have a kitchen so I have to eat all my meals at a cute little cafe or tapas place and have no dishes to do. I’ve never been to Spain so what do I know about it? The point is that it’s something different. Something novel. Surprise and delight are difficult things to manufacture for oneself.
Perhaps when summer arrives the restlessness will fade, or perhaps it will spill over into next winter, or the next, the dissatisfaction a quiet simmer of motivation, of constant yearning and striving to absorb as much of the joy and juice of life as possible in this single allotted lifetime.
I also love many things, for example I love my daughter
Ok I should confess there are two lies in this piece, the first thing to clear up is that I'm not an idiot for divorcing my son's father that was an excellent move, and the other is that I actually have a party to go to this weekend so I guess I do get invited to things.