Yesterday, I let myself panic.
The day started off well. I went on one of my favourite walks. I listened to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic podcast. I took this photo.
I wanted to remember the stillness of that moment. That field is to the left of a path. To the right is a dual carriageway that is constantly thundering with traffic, with cars, lorries and vans. And yet that horse stood calm and as I watched it eat, I was calm.
Then I got back home and started to work. I had a plan for the morning. Write six pages of my superhero comic. I had the story broken down and was ready to go… but it didn’t work. The story wasn’t right, the scenes weren’t working. The deadline was twenty-four hours away and I knew I had to go back and start again, scrapping everything I’d written. I went into a spiral. Everything became too much.
All thoughts of that moment standing on the path watching the stillness of the horse evaporated. I was staring instead into the dual carriageway, overwhelmed with the noise and the speed and the fury of the road. I was out of control.
In short, I forgot to breathe. Probably quite literally.
The great thing about life is that a new day is always another chance to get it right. By the end of yesterday, I had gone back and rewritten the pages, starting from scratch. Today, I will finish the issue and get it in for the deadline. I will also remember to breathe, to look to the stillness of the horse in the field not to the thunder of the road.
That’s why I wanted to share that photo today, in the hope that if you have a moment when you go into a spiral, you can take a step back, you can breathe, and you can start again.
Have a great day.
PS. This is the episode of the Daily Stoic podcast I was listening to. I really recommend this and the daily reading book. Both have been helping me a lot recently.
Be the first to comment