What happens when there is NOTHING on the front of your Carousel (or what happens when you need to embrace the space?)

There will come a time when the busy, colourful life of a Carouseller stops moving. Sometimes it will screech to a halt, but more often than not it will be so sneaky that you wake up one morning to realise there is nothing I really need to do right now.

For a lot of people this is the dream; for a Carouseller this is a LIVING HELL.

(By the way — if you’re new to Carousel, it’s the idea of setting up our lives in our way that embraces and celebrates variety — imagining that your projects move around in and out of focus like on a Yo Sushi conveyer belt. You can read more about it here).

When you are what you do; when you are the sum of all your exciting projects and ideas and this has gone, it’s really hard to deal with it.

There comes a time when NOTHING must become the SOMETHING on the front of your Carousel, and for a short time EVERYTHING ELSE need to de-camp to the back.

This can feel like laziness, boredom, sluggish behaviour. You can question your worth, your purpose, your entire existence. In my case when NOTHING is at the front of my Carousel, I go into life-plan overdrive…

I rush around manically trying to find that SOMETHING to fill the void. Something to occupy myself, my mind. Shall I move to Bristol? Move to Spain? Volunteer with refugees? Be a Primary School teacher? Start a band?

I tire myself out speaking to every single person I cross paths with about what I should do next. I am desperate for an answer. Everyone’s life becomes my inspiration and I wish I could just slot into the roles they have spent years curating.

I have essentially pulled the alarm chord on Carousel — thrown everything off, and am standing in the middle, trying to work out which bags are mine, and which belong to the people around me. I become impatient — observing as every new idea comes in to ‘solve the problem’. I have total conviction that THIS is this thing. I share these new plans, believing them to be the way out, yet when people ask how long I have been considering this ‘dream’ of getting a part time job in a cafe and becoming a film composer I admit it’s only been 45 minutes. It is Carous-HELL.

People remind me of all the wonderful things on my Carousel, but I can’t see them. I’m living permanently in the ‘on the radar’ section, trying to yank them around to the front, and then almost as soon as they get there, resenting their presence in my life. No plan is quite right.

This is Carousel burnout. Overwhelm of ideas and options. The safety of a plan, ANY DAMN PLAN, just to be working on something.

It may not feel like ‘burnout’ in the traditional sense, but it IS the same. Because when even SPACE itself feels exhausting, you probably really need it.

And yet, if we are still enough for a second, we know that we need to stop. We can’t make any decisions or plans for a place of crisis, of grabbing.

For the moment, I invite you top up on the basics.

If the thought of 3 days in a row with no solid plans are freaking you out to the point of mental exhaustion, you probably need to take those 3 days not to be productive. The space is not there to find a new job, or find a new hobby, or write the novel, or take up jazz piano, or cook 10 types of soup, or write letters to everyone you love because now you have the time, or finally learn Greek on Duolingo.

No, if 3 days space are freaking out you out — TAKE THEM AS SPACE.

If work has suddenly been cancelled — take it as a sign — the universe is easing up your schedule because it knows your need it

Only when you’ve had enough sleep, meditated, spent time doing things you love (but not trying to make a career out of it or prototype it into a new business idea); only when you have turned off your phone, cancelled everything non-essential and questioned whether the ‘essential’ can be delegated or cancelled too; only when you’ve taken a week of embracing and dare I say RELISHING in unstructrued time that our body and lives are SO clearly crying out for, then and ONLY THEN should we start moving stuff around the Carousel.

And the good news? You won’t actually need to do anything, because when you have recovered, things will move around naturally anyway. But when you’re in the middle of it, it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like we need to engineer every single moment of our lives, just to stay afloat.

At the height/depth of my #carouselcrisis, I booked a one-way flight to Barcelona. I knew the energy and space of springtime Spain would re-calibrate me. I spent nearly 48 hours without my phone. I sat in a bar and spent two hours drinking one glass of Rioja. I walked slowly, noticing my rushed pace even though I had nowhere to be. I gave myself permission to do whatever I wanted, and to pause any decisions or exploration while I was there. And it was bliss.

As I sat in a bar two days into my trip, I noticed how different my Wednesday had been from a week earlier. Both in some ways identical in content: I had ‘nothing to do’, but while in the former this was a curse, in the latter this was the whole point. I made the following list, knowing I would probably find myself in a similar position again in the future:

If you have unexepected space as a freelancer, if you’re there is NOTHING at the front of your Carousel, before you do any of the deep digs, do the following:

1. Name it as that. ‘I am in NOTHING’.
2. Cancel/rearrange/delegate everything that is non essential: see if you can get child-care, tell your job you’re not coming in, say sorry to your rehearsal group — YOU CAN’T BE THERE.

(When people are called away suddenly on Business people work around them and understand. You are being called away on ‘Nothing Business’.)

3. If you can, leave London (or wherever you live) — this will make it easier not to be dragged into things last minute or be temped to still go to your running club.

4. If you can’t do this, see if you can stay with a friend or change your environment somehow. (Even rearrange your room.)

5. Turn off your phone for 24 hours.

6. Don’t set an alarm — allow your body to sleep as much as it needs.

7. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘what feels EASY right now?’, ‘what will nourish me?’ and then do it. If any bone if your body feels unhappy, don’t do it. Go for a FULL BODY YES. Teach your body it’s okay to feel at ease.

8. Turn off tech if possible. If watching Netflix feels easy, do it for 1 day but don’t fall into a Netflix wormhole.

9. Do things where you won’t talk to people — yoga, walking, dancing, running — but try not to do any big socialising where people will ask you what you’re up to — your brain needs a break from life-thinking and career-justifying.

10. Have a day when you leave your phone at home and just walk aimlessly, following your tug.

11. Go somewhere where you’ve never been before and have no connection or memories of.

12. Or go somewhere where you have very positive memories, where just being there will calm your body.

13. Seek solitude (eg. this doesn’t necessarily mean being alone, but being without external input of ideas, so you can be with and process your thoughts).

14. Try not to start a course, read a really challenging book, or do mental exercise. Empty your brain of anything cognitive/processy and debilitating.

Just do this for 1 day.

1 DAY.

And then if you can for 1 more. Take as long as you can before you world implodes without you being there (!)

Keep it so chilled and easy. If after the first day you feel like you have a renewed sense of energy do not and I repeat DO NOT sign up for ariel yoga or arrange to see 20 friends for coffee.

Through doing this you are teaching your body, mind and nervous system that it’s ok to just be.

It is a praticse that will be easier over time.

(By the way if reading difficult literature for you is a joy and EASY then do it. Equally if going for a long walk in nature feels like a drag, don’t.)

Basically plan your perfect day and then do it over and over.

Have a week of Sundays.

Then, and only then — come back to Carousel.