I’ll be honest: when Recognize was first selected as part of my Year in Review, I did not know what it was supposed to be about. Reflect made sense. I was looking back at the year I had actually lived. But what was I supposed to recognize?
As I worked through the questions, I realized I was describing a manifesto of sorts. Not a list of rules everyone else should follow, but the things I have learned about how I live my life and how I want to continue living it.
Some of them surprised me. Some of them didn’t. A few were things I already knew but had never admitted out loud.
In the end, most of what I discovered came down to five things:
Meaning. Momentum. Flexibility. Evidence. Discovery.
They are not another system I am supposed to follow perfectly. They are the conditions that make it possible for me to build a life around the person I actually am.
Meaning
What I am doing has to matter to me or give me something in return.
That may sound obvious, but there are plenty of things we are told we should do simply because they are good for us, productive or expected. Apparently, knowing something is worthwhile is not always enough to keep me doing it.
Aquafit stayed because I enjoyed it. I didn’t see results immediately, but it was fun enough to keep me going until the results appeared. Eventually there was the medium dress. I reached a weight below 200 pounds and stayed there. The activity gave me something while I was doing it and supported something that mattered to me over time.
Photography gave me joy almost immediately. It kept my mind and hands occupied, but it also brought my curiosity back into my everyday life. The more photographs I took, the more I wanted to notice, see and understand. It led me to new places, gave me more things to create and helped me reconnect with my roots through older photographs. Those photographs will also become part of the history I leave to my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Both activities gave something back while I was doing them.
On the other hand, if something only drains my energy without giving me anything in return, I will eventually stop. That doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t worthwhile. It means it is not worth the amount of energy I am spending in that form.
That last part matters: in that form.
Meaning, for me, is not about whether something looks productive from the outside. It is about whether I can connect it to something that matters in my actual life.
If something is going to remain part of my life, I need a reason to care about it and something that gives back along the way.
Momentum
I need to understand enough to see progress and know what comes next.
I don’t need to know exactly how everything will turn out before I begin, but I do need a foothold. Something has to click. I need to understand at least part of what I’m doing or be able to see that my effort is leading somewhere.
French is a good example. I wanted to learn it because of the proposed trip to Old Montreal, and I managed to continue for about a month. Eventually it became boring and too difficult. I think having a real person to speak French with would have helped. I would have been using what I learned instead of completing exercises without any connection to my daily life.
The creative summer class ended in a similar way. I had been away from that kind of creative work for too long. Many of the tools and techniques I once knew had changed, and the new ways of doing things didn’t make sense to me. I kept trying, but without anything clicking, frustration took over.
That doesn’t necessarily mean I couldn’t learn French or understand the new creative tools. It means those particular methods did not give me a way in. After several hours of trying, struggling and asking for instructions, continuing in exactly the same way becomes another drain on my energy.
Momentum also affects whether I believe I have accomplished anything. Notes alone don’t usually count for me. They are still subject to a dozen changes before the real work begins. A solid framework is different. It may not be finished, but the idea has become mine. I can see its shape and know what comes next.
That is when preparation begins to feel like creation.
I don’t need the whole path. I need enough of a foothold to take the next step and enough visible progress to know that my effort is leading somewhere.
Flexibility
The method has to bend with the reality of my life.
Some of you will understand this immediately and some of you probably won’t, but I need structure without rigidity. I like having a beginning, a direction and some idea of what comes next. What I cannot sustain is a system that expects me to do the same thing at the same time for the same length of time every day.
Popular productivity advice often says that consistency means following a fixed schedule until the behaviour becomes automatic. That assumes I will wake up with roughly the same amount of physical and mental energy each day. I don’t.
It may be a bad pain day, a low-energy day or one of those confusing mental days when the words and thoughts take longer to come together. Sometimes my energy changes within the same day. A plan that only works when I feel well is not a particularly useful plan for my life.
Aquafit taught me something about this. I began with a grand plan to attend three times a week. Fatigue, pain, illness and travel eventually reduced that to once a week, when I am well enough to participate fully. On paper, that might look as though I failed to follow the plan. In reality, doing less is what allowed Aquafit to remain part of my life.
The original plan did not survive. The purpose did.
Energy is also specific. I can walk thousands of steps while exploring somewhere interesting and then struggle to clean my kitchen. That doesn’t mean I am pretending to be tired or choosing only the fun things. An adventure and a household task ask different things of me. Being capable of one demanding activity does not mean I have enough energy for every supposedly easier one.
Recovery has to fit inside the plan too. I cannot put the rest of my life on hold until I am completely well because completely well may never arrive. At the same time, I cannot pretend recovery is unnecessary.
I need room for both.
Changing the method, reducing the size or moving the timetable is not abandoning the goal. It is how I make space for the goal inside the life I actually have.
Evidence
I need to look at what actually happened, not only at how I feel about it.
My internal account of a day is not always accurate. I can complete necessary errands, attend appointments and deal with something important, then come home feeling as though I accomplished nothing because I did not create anything.
That happened recently after I met with the pharmacist for a medication review and went to ServiceOntario to update my identification. Both things needed doing. Both required time, travel, concentration and energy. Yet because I had not completed any creative work, the day felt unproductive.
I know maintenance matters. Appointments, paperwork, housekeeping and cooking keep my life functioning. Research and notes prepare the ground for future work. But they do not give me the same sense of accomplishment as taking an idea from my head and making it real.
This need for evidence extends beyond individual days.
I can become stronger and maintain a weight below 200 pounds while still living in a body affected by illness, pain and fatigue. My vulnerability does not erase the evidence of my growing capability, and my increased capability does not mean the vulnerability has disappeared.
But what remains undone is not the only evidence that matters.
When my feelings tell me I have done nothing or made no progress, I need to look at the life I actually lived before I believe them.
Discovery
I need something I haven’t already mastered, seen or understood.
This was probably the most surprising thing I recognized because the pattern stretches much farther back than this year.
When I become competent enough at something, I often lose interest in it. Sometimes I stop suddenly and sometimes the interest fades slowly, but once the challenge is gone, I usually stop.
I learned to knit and purl well enough to complete a set of fingerless gloves, and then I stopped knitting. I figured out the mechanics of weaving and left my final project unfinished. I completed three miniature rooms without much difficulty, but when other people became interested in buying them, I stopped making them.
At first that sounds like I cannot stick with anything, but I don’t think that is what is happening. In each case, I stayed long enough to answer the question that interested me: Can I figure out how to do this?
Once the answer was yes, the activity felt complete. Making more of the same was no longer a challenge. It was repetition, and repetition became boring.
That creates a strange balance. Too little understanding frustrates me, but complete predictability loses me too. I need enough understanding to gain momentum and enough uncertainty to remain curious.
Photography continues to hold my attention because knowing how to take a photograph does not mean I already know what I will find. Every walk offers different subjects, questions and stories. Writing and design work the same way. I may know how to use the tools, but each piece asks me to make different decisions.
This is also where I recognized that I move through the world in a very particular way. The subject may change, but the process rarely does:
Notice → Wonder → Follow → Understand → Preserve/Share
I notice something that catches my attention. It makes me wonder. I follow the question through observation, research or conversation until I understand it well enough for it to become part of my world. Then I preserve or share it through photographs, writing, design, my Daybook or simply my own memory.
My interests are not as scattered as they sometimes appear. Photography, wandering, history, writing, design and research are all connected by the same curiosity.
The subject isn’t the organizing principle. My way of looking is.
I stay engaged when there is still something to discover. Once the question has been answered and only repetition remains, I am usually ready to follow my curiosity somewhere else.
What I Am Still Working On
Recognizing a pattern does not mean I have solved it. There are two things in particular that I know I still need to work on.
The first is compassion for myself. I have always found it easier to make room for another person’s needs, mistakes and struggles than my own. Boundaries were little more than a word to me when I was younger, but slowly I learned to build them. They do not mean I have stopped caring. They mean I am finally trying to include myself among the people worthy of my care.
The second is learning which problems are mine to solve. Some belong to other people, some have no clear solution and some of my own problems may remain problems for a long time. Caring does not make me responsible for fixing everything. Knowing what might help does not always mean I have the energy, ability or circumstances to make it happen.
I am still learning where responsibility ends, where acceptance begins and when continuing to push is doing more harm than good.
Recognize did not give me another system to follow. It gave me five conditions that help me understand why some things become part of my life and others fall away:
Meaning. Momentum. Flexibility. Evidence. Discovery.
What I do needs to matter. I need enough of a foothold to move forward. The method has to bend with the reality of my life. I need to look at what I have actually done, not only at how I feel about it. And I need something left to discover.
Together, they lead me back to one guiding principle:
I do not need a perfect system designed for the person I am supposed to be. I need a life built around the person I actually am.
That is not an excuse to stop growing. It is the ground I need in order to grow at all.
