I spin therefore I am

I spent a lot of my life feeling like a spinning top. It used to be my default way of being before I went on sabbatical, not because it was the best way of being but because I didn't know any other.

I emerged from a good night’s sleep with thoughts of things I should be doing flowing through my head. 

The flow was slow at first… I want to complete this diagram I’m creating at work. I should talk to this colleague to solve that problem. Oh I also need to talk to the same colleague about that other point.

I could feel the flow increase steadily as I was waking up, like a mountain stream that joins nearby streams to become a more powerful river. I want to go to the market before 09:00 to avoid the crowd. I want to tidy up that bit of the living room because we have guests coming by later. I still want to complete this diagram.

The list was becoming too long for me to hold in my head when one of the passing thoughts caught my attention more than the others: Morning Pages! I should write my Morning Pages. 

I got up, with a clear intention to scribble those three pages which Julia Cameron recommends you write with a pen and paper (not a laptop) first thing in the morning, in her book The Artist’s Way. 

I write Morning Pages to channel the stream of consciousness that seems to be going on in my head most of the time. Putting some of the stream of consciousness down onto paper forces me to slow down because I can’t write as fast as I think, and capturing my thoughts means I don’t have to hold onto them in my head anymore, which creates a wonderful sense of spaciousness inside of me.

This morning I noticed that I was writing fast, as if I wanted to capture every fleeting thought in my head. So fast that some of the letters of the words I was scribbling in cursive were swallowed by the speed of my pen.

I decided to slow down, enough to give myself the time to properly write out each letter that made out the words I wanted to write. As I slowed down, I noticed I wasn’t panicking that I might lose some of the precious stream of consciousness in my head, but rather that the stream was slowing down alongside me. 

By spelling thoughts out I was calming them down, which felt a lot more peaceful than my previous strategy, which seemed to have been to let them dictate the (inhumane) speed at which I should think and be.

Slowing down allowed me to notice the warmth of a ray of sun on my ankle. It tasted of hope, like spring had finally arrived after months of gray winter. And now that my attention had been brought to my legs, I noticed that they were tightly crossed. My right leg was pressing against my left knee as if the two of them together were responsible for creating a tight container to hold onto all those thoughts that had been flowing through my head. They certainly felt like they had an important job and were obviously serious about doing it well.

I smiled to myself, uncrossed my legs and placed both of my feet on the floor. I felt like I was regaining control of my life experience. I could feel myself calm down in real time. It’s like I’d gone from feeling and thinking something new every second, to every ten seconds or more.

I use ‘feeling’ and ‘thinking’ independently as if they were separate concepts but in my experience they are very much the same. My stream of consciousness is primarily made out of feelings and colours, and very little thinking in proper sentences. Sometimes words appear in an attempt to capture otherwise fleeting feelings. Altogether, this looks like an ever-changing colourful cloud of feelings and words. The way it moves resembles a flock of birds that flies—and sometimes swiftly changes direction—in unison.   

Once my feet were solidly placed on the ground I realised I’d been holding my breath the entire time. I automatically took a deep breath in, and let myself take all the time I needed to breathe out. I felt myself slow down even further. Now I could feel myself breathe. My legs felt relaxed. I could sense the sun’s warmth on my ankle and my feet weighing down onto the floor.

I felt grounded and peaceful. The whole experience probably lasted less than ten minutes, from the moment I got out of bed to the moment I felt at peace.

I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like a spinning top

What’s interesting to me is that feeling grounded and present is not the default state I’ve seemed to wake up in in the past twelve years of my life since I started work.

Instead, I’ve mostly woken up feeling like I was a spinning top that didn’t have any other option than to spin faster and faster as the flow of thoughts and feelings I was having to engage with grew as I awakened. On days like that, the only way to get the spinning to stop accelerating was for me to start doing the things that my stream of consciousness was suggesting I do. If I didn’t, it would keep suggesting more and more things for me to do until I felt too overwhelmed to even pick a task.

The stream of consciousness always won. I would always end up picking a task and getting it done.

From the outside, managers and colleagues would describe me as ‘action-oriented’ and ‘productive’. I’d get stuff done and well. All true, but I’d not really been choosing to be that way. It was simply my habitual way of responding to an overwhelming stream of consciousness. I ‘did’ the overwhelm away and was rewarded for it.

At least that used to be my habitual way of responding until I went on sabbatical.

Going on sabbatical taught me what it feels like not to spin

Before I went on sabbatical, I was a spinning top. An overachieving spinning top. And when I left work to go on sabbatical, I cleared my diary of anything I had to do and any expectations from others, letting go of any need to spin. There was nothing for me to spin about!  

In the beginning, the spinning top still wanted to spin. 

After all, it was the only way of being it knew. If you’d been spinning your entire life, you too would probably be worried about what would happen if you stopped! You can’t stop. You’re not meant to stop. If you stop, you might not be able to start spinning again. Best not put yourself in that situation. KEEP SPINNING!

It took me a while to let things slow down, to let go of my familiar spinning ways and welcome whatever new and unfamiliar ways of being would come from not spinning.

As the spinning top was timidly slowing down, I realised that not only was nothing bad happening, but I was also starting to get a sense of the shape of the object, and its colours. What once looked like a constantly spinning blur now felt like a flamboyant piece of delicately carved wood. 

And because I was the spinning top itself, slowing down also meant I was getting to experience the world in a way that didn’t feel like a blur. A way that felt more present, aware, and grounded.

I even let my spinning top come to a halt, not knowing if I’d ever be able to spin it again like I used to. Part of me felt a bit worried in the moment… Spinning tops are a useful way of being in the world: you get things done quickly, with hardly any support, and in perfect balance with the outside world. But now that I’ve found my way back into work and city life again, I can safely say that yes, I can spin like a spinning top again. 

If I choose to.

Now it only takes a micro-moment for me to choose not be a spinning top

Going on sabbatical showed me there are other ways of being that do not involve spinning like the fastest and bestest spinning top. I now know that those ways of being are available to me. I’ve embodied them and I know they are enjoyable and safe.

Coming back from sabbatical has shown me that my old spinning ways are still accessible to me should I want to use them. Discovering new ways of being did not make the old ones inaccessible. Phew.

Knowing that I don’t have to spin to exist—and that good things can also come from not spinning—makes it easier for me to notice moments where I seem to be on the verge of tipping over into my decade-long-practiced spinning mode. It also makes it easier for me to choose not to spin in that moment, if I feel like it would be preferable for me to engage with the world in a different way.

My point is that stepping away from familiar ways of being for months has helped me unlock the ability to choose how I want to engage with the world in any given moment. 

It doesn’t take much to stop the spinning. All it takes is to notice it’s happening and to choose not to spin. But you can only choose not to spin if you know that an alternative way of being exists and is safe for you to use.

This is exactly what happened as I was scribbling my Morning Pages. All it took was for me to notice that I was spinning so fast that I wasn’t even writing my words in full. In the micro-moment I decided to write them in full, everything changed. By stepping away from my familiar way of engaging with the world, I triggered a suite of simple events which made the spinning calm down pretty effectively.

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More about sabbaticals: whether you're thinking of going on an extended break from work or you’ve already taken the leap, you are right in the middle of an experience that can transform your life in a truly meaningful way. It’s exciting of course, but it can also feel scary, lonely and a bit overwhelming at times.

I’ve created two playbooks to help you on your journey:

• Thinking of a sabbatical will give you everything you need to consciously decide if going on an extended break from work is the right move for you

• On Sabbatical is a self-paced digital experience with insight, structure and resources to turn your sabbatical into a life-changing experience