Domestic Therapy

When I heard that Nancy Pelosi was doing dishes and throwing in laundry while waiting on hold for Mike Pence after the Capitol riot, I was flabbergasted.  My first thought was, “I’m sure Chuck Schumer was not doing household chores while waiting to ask the Vice President of the United States to invoke the 25th Amendment.”  

Then, I remembered a note I had just scribbled in my notebook a few days before.  It says, “When the world feels out of control—deep cleaning a couch does wonders for me.”

I realized that perhaps the Speaker of the House and I were tapping into the same well of strength.  We were finding solvable problems and putting them to rights, especially in the midst of chaos.  We were working through tumult by bringing order to our spaces.

Even when the stakes are not so very high, I find myself turning to some form of domestic therapy or another.  Stepping away from my writing from time to time to do something mundane allows my brain to stretch for a moment.  As I fold a few towels or refill my pen, my brain can come at my writing from a new angle.  It allows my thoughts to marinate a bit, without having to stare despondently into space.  Actually, I suppose, it’s a sort of proactive staring into space.

I’m talking about puttering around a bit at chores, not about going to town on a full scale Spring Cleaning.  I mean the ease of drying a few dishes between sentences or mindlessly sweeping as I consider a particular turn of phrase.  

Engaging in my home in this way goes a long way toward releasing the pressure on the “production valve”.  If something feels like it’s moving forward, my writing or artwork doesn’t have to respond to the pressure to produce.  It helps keep the focus off outcomes in my work if I can point to outcomes that I can control. 

Hearing the laundry humming along as I write gives me a comfortable feeling that things are happening, that things are getting done, even if the writing feels like I’m thrashing around a bit.