Tending to My Garden

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Highlights

  • I realised I was tending to it like I would tend to a garden. Watering it, pruning it, adding a little here and there. I enjoyed the process. I like making a small change and knowing it is a little bit better than before. It wasn’t like this labourious, painful, tiring process I was used to. I try to not work on it past 8pm because it affects my sleep, I stop when I notice I’m mentally tired – this awareness wasn’t easy for me to cultivate, on days when I am not well I don’t even attempt to do anything.
  • It is also about the capacity to tend to myself like I am a growing, living, person, not an object to be beaten into shape. A person who has organic, shifting, complex feelings. Sometimes things fail and that is simply part of life. Flowers wither, and you could give your best care to a plant and it will still die.

title: “Tending to My Garden” author: “winnielim.org” url: ”https://winnielim.org/essays/tending-to-my-garden/” date: 2023-12-19 source: hypothesis tags: media/articles

Tending to My Garden

rw-book-cover

Metadata

Highlights

  • I realised I was tending to it like I would tend to a garden. Watering it, pruning it, adding a little here and there. I enjoyed the process. I like making a small change and knowing it is a little bit better than before. It wasn’t like this labourious, painful, tiring process I was used to. I try to not work on it past 8pm because it affects my sleep, I stop when I notice I’m mentally tired – this awareness wasn’t easy for me to cultivate, on days when I am not well I don’t even attempt to do anything.
  • It is also about the capacity to tend to myself like I am a growing, living, person, not an object to be beaten into shape. A person who has organic, shifting, complex feelings. Sometimes things fail and that is simply part of life. Flowers wither, and you could give your best care to a plant and it will still die.