This weekend I've been hitting the reset button in a small way. I was sick for most of January with some generic crud (negative Covid tests) that made me tired, crabby, unproductive, and not my best self. Worse, it was my biggest grading assignment of the year and so instead of having extra energy to grind out all of those papers, I fell behind when I needed to be be getting ahead. By the time I felt well enough to tackle all of the things I fell behind on, I had to dig myself out of a big hole full of grading, a messy house, a diet and exercise plan that had turned to junk food on the sofa, and motivation in the toilet. First, I had to do the basics - get those papers graded so that I could turn in my semester grades. Then, I got to celebrate Tessa's 21st birthday in a weekend filled with festivities.
But now I'm actually hitting reset. I'm not sick anymore, and there is no giant looming deadline - to the contrary, there is a break just a work week away. The semester grades are turned in, and now I can think about doing better instead of merely surviving. It's time to hit the reset button.
I hit the reset button a lot. Sometimes it's a giant reset button that I hit while the factory floor is blaring with emergency alarms yelling "DANGER! DANGER! STEP AWAY NOW!" like when I got divorced, or when I finally acknowledged that my family is suffering from inter-generational trauma that I had to step away from or be sucked into. Sometimes it's a medium reset - but medium resets always feel gigantic when you're in them - like when I've needed a new job, or to restructure my finances (like when my basement flooded and I needed a HELOC to fix it, or like when Tessa went to college and I needed to figure out how to make up 18 years of not saving enough with 4 years of college (which, in all honesty, is looking closer to five years).
This reset is minor by comparison. A few weeks of having some flu-like thing, the doldrums of the post-holiday letdown in rainy January, the daily grind of work in a busy season - these things are not so important that I'll remember the feelings that accompanied them a few years from now.
But I love a good reset anyway.
I listened to a podcast (whose name I have long since forgotten, but it might have been an episode of Hidden Brain?) years ago that talked about how when you have a change in your life is the best time to create new habits to create the life you most want. This can look like after graduation, after marriage, after a child, after a death in the family, after a disaster, after a health crisis, when getting a new job, when moving to a new city, etc. This intuitively makes sense to me: when the balls of my life are thrown up in the air and some fall to the ground, it's an obvious time to decide which balls to get rid of, which ones to take care of, which ones need adding.
So my January mini-crisis is a good time to hit reset again.
Whenever I get sick, I remember cancer, and how it nearly stole my life, and how it did steal several years that should have been joyful (raising a small beloved child) and turned them into high cortisol level continuous freak outs and pain over surgery and drugs and loss. When I got better, about eight years later, I vowed that I would live my life to the fullest. I vowed that I would remember how I nearly lost it all, and I would live my life fully. It was a major reset: I lost 40 pounds, got divorced, became a hiker, ran a half marathon or two, embraced my life, created a career out of what felt like thin air, parented intentionally. If I was a super human, this would be the end - learn the lesson, live the lesson, happily ever after. But I'm not. I'm absolutely, 100% human, and I'm prone to forgetfulness and mistakes, and slowly the lessons slipped away. I didn't go back to hell - I didn't remarry my ex, or restart chemo, or enter a financial no-(wo)man's-land, but I slid. I gained pounds. I complained more often about stupid stuff. Some days better, some days I was worse, but on all days I was human. Perhaps you can relate? For isn't this everyone's story?
But the gift of backsliding far enough is that it makes me hit reset.
Yesterday, I cleaned my house. I took out all the vacuum cleaner attachments and got into the corners. I pulled all the shoes and storage bins out of the bottom of my closet, and vacuumed up the (shocking amounts of) dust I found. I wiped down the fridge, cleaned the bottom of the trash bin, organized the mail. I got a pedicure and a haircut (the last ones were in...AUGUST?!), brought books in for credit at my local bookstore, gassed up the car and got a car wash. I went to the yoga studio for a class for the first time in the month (and remembered how much better an in person class is than a session of basement yoga, even if I have a good video lesson). I threw open the doors and windows of my house, and let the fresh air blow through, cleaning the air, but also whispering over my skin and waking me up. I flipped my mattress, and washed everything including the throw pillow covers and the mattress cover.
And then I sat back and thought "yes.... yes yes yes."
This morning, it's a different kind of house cleaning. I'm on the desk treadmill, writing to you, clearing the cobwebs from my brain and warming up to work on my book. I've listed major threads of the book - themes that I am weaving together - in a fit of brainstorming and organization for said book. I am pysching myself up for some grading later on today, reminding myself not how much I hate grading but how good it feels to start the week on top of things (this is a major reset in the way I think of things, something I struggle with a great deal).
Even at three miles an hour on the treadmill - hardly strenuous - I can feel my body waking up, feel my brain tickling with the reset. It feels filled with possibility - maybe I CAN make the life I want! - but also energy creating. In the time it has taken me to write this, I feel a light sheen of sweat inside my pajamas (one benefit of an at home treadmill is that I don't need to wear workout clothes - I can work out in last night's pajamas, saving myself a bit of laundry!). Heat is building inside myself.
I've made myself a promise to finish the first draft of my book by the summer. I've made myself a promise to stay out of the grading hole (hence tonight's plan). I've made myself a promise to hit the treadmill or the yoga studio on the rainy days.
It's a little reset, and one I'm well prepared for. The book is underway, and I have pages of notes to guide me when I get stuck. My little office whiteboard (how lucky am I to have an office?!) is covered with ideas. I have a desk treadmill so that I can move my body even when going outside is unappealingly grey, cold, and wet. I have students I love, and I'm not in the grading hole yet, so I can stay caught up. And I have a week of vacation right around the corner - a few days visiting my bestie in California, and a few days to work on that book and be introverted and catch my breath (in between runs or walks to Lincoln Park, and yoga classes, and reading books).
I love a good reset, large or small. I know that I'll probably struggle some days - after work, it's SO HARD to remember to write when I'm tired and hungry and crabby; same thing with exercise. But the days are getting longer, and I'm renewed with energy, so I'm pushing that button.
What a joy it is to be healthy. What a joy it is to be freed from toxic relationships. What a joy it is to have lovely plans on the calendar! Cleaning the house wasn't as fun (it took longer than expected and it was quite a physical workout), and grading isn't as fun, but I remember again how much I like living in a clean house and how much satisfaction I feel when my grades are up to date.
This summer, I'm looking forward to saying "I wrote a book. I'm editing it now." I deserve that satisfaction, and so I'm hitting reset on how often I write. I'm thanking Ann Patchett for mentioning that she wrote her last book on a treadmill like the one I was inspired to get, so that I can take care of my body as well as my mind.
Reset!
Filled with gratitude that I don't have to do a huge reset - same job, healthy, same friends, same hopes and dreams, and projects in the works to remind me of my creative self - I hit the button lightly, but intentionally.
What are you resetting right now? How do you manage your reset? Do you have times of year that you hit reset? This one has beautifully coincided with Lunar New Year, which is not my cultural holiday, but still contains beauty that I can learn from. I love to hit reset at the semester, at my birthday, at the beginning of school, at every break, in summer, on actual New Year's, and any time life changes a bit (like recovering from being sick). Some of the resets stick better than others, it's true, but all of them count, and my life improves a little bit with every hit of the button.
I know I'll go up and down forever until I die, and these days, that doesn't scare me at all - it is the cycle of life. But I also know that as long as that reset button awaits me in my life, as long as I remember where it is, anything is possible.
Anything is possible.
Reset!
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