Though the life I’ve envisioned for myself may never materialize, I’ve drawn up a short list of skills that I should acquire or practice some more. The list includes things like learning new languages, taking a course on permaculture, reading up on herbs and practicing making my own home remedies, broadening my horizon regarding knitting and sewing, possibly even trying my hand at making shoes. The list also includes getting a bit more insight in repairing and servicing automobiles, but I think I’ll leave that to Top1.
There is one skill on that list that I have already mastered, through vast experience. It is called “compartmentalizing”, and it means that I am able to sit in my office, translating or proofreading or editing, for hours on end, while curbing the urge to run away and play in the flow. It also means I can live in a rather hostile environment (on many levels, the risk of natural gas extraction induced earthquakes destroying our home being one of them) and educate myself about the madness that is called The System, without actually going mad. (I do get frustrated from time to time, as the impact upon our lives is considerable.)
Compartmentalizing means I can go on translating my novel into English, even though the Dutch version hasn’t been picked up by many people yet. Hell, it has meant that I could write the darn thing, reaching inside over and over again to add truth to my words on a level I had not thought possible.
It means I continue to write and draw and create, even though these activities take time away from me earning a decent living (which is hard enough as it is). It means I can get up in the morning after yet another night bereft of vivid and loving dreams, and still feel quite rested, content even, during the day, with a little sunshine or a chat with a friend. It means I can love the little people in my house to death, and still be firm with them. It means I bring loads of structure to this home, even though I abhor structure. It means I deal with tax papers, for myself and others, though I am disgusted by those freaking forms and all they represent. It means I can be good at whatever needs to be done, and not hate myself for it.
Compartmentalizing is a tiresome skill, and I did not ask for it. There was no yearning, no searching the internet high and low for more information about it, no admiring people who obviously had perfected it, envying them because they had found ways to fill their lives with it.
And yet, here I am, the Queen of Compartmentalizing. There is comfort in the realization that it is likened to “stoicism” by some, and that this is a highly sought-after philosophical skill.