Pre-Packaged Life

Recently, I came across an old essay I wrote during a particularly chaotic period of my life. I was working twelve- and fourteen-hour days, waking before six, and galloping from one obligation to another like a madwoman.

I don’t remember exactly when the ridiculousness began. I only remember the moment it became impossible to ignore.

“Mum,” my son said, “I just want you to stop working.”

The words landed like a dagger. They were also a courageous plea for sanity.

My body had already been trying to tell me the same thing. The clearest warning was my inability to sleep. At the end of another long day, I would climb into bed, read for a while, and then turn off the light, doing my best impersonation of Sleepy from Sleeping Beauty.

But the moment the room went dark, the lists began.

Emails to answer. Calls to make. Tasks I had forgotten and others I feared I might forget. I watched the digital clock turn from 1:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., then drifted in and out of uneasy sleep while people from my past and present wandered through my dreams.

I think of those dreams as truths—the things our minds try to tell us when we’re finally quiet enough to listen.

The day after I stepped away from the work schedule I had become addicted to, I drove to the supermarket. I pushed my trolley through the aisles in a daze, filling it with vegetables, fruit, and everything I needed to cook from scratch. My body seemed to be craving not only nourishing food, but the rituals of home. I wanted to bake cookies, roast vegetables, and prepare something slowly enough that I could savor the smell of it cooking.

As I moved through the supermarket, I became unusually aware of everything designed to save us time: jars of sauce, frozen dinners, ready-made muffins, microwave meals, and pre-cut vegetables.

There is nothing wrong with any of those things. Sometimes convenience is exactly what gets us through the day. But on that particular morning, they seemed to represent the life I had been living, a life hurriedly assembled, consumed on the run, and never quite savored.

That was when everything fell into place.

I didn’t want a pre-packaged life.

I wanted time to cook for my family and walk with friends. I wanted to sleep deeply, read slowly, notice the changing seasons, and stop long enough to smell the roses. I wanted space for the ideas that arrive only when we are not frantically filling every moment.

I also wanted to create.

Creativity is often treated as something indulgent, something we’re permitted to pursue only after the “real” work is finished. Writers, musicians, painters, gardeners, craftspeople, and other makers are frequently told not to give up their day jobs. Practical advice, perhaps, but dangerous when it persuades us to abandon the part of ourselves that feels most alive.

We need structure. We need to support ourselves and the people who depend upon us. But we also need to protect our imaginations from being suffocated by exhaustion and fear.

Years have passed since I first learned this lesson, and I wish I could say I never needed to learn it again. But life has a way of speeding up around us. Work we love can consume us just as completely as work we dislike.

Perhaps balance isn’t something we achieve once and keep forever. Perhaps it is something we must continually notice, choose, and restore.

So, I’m reminding myself again: Don’t surrender your dreams to the demands of the day. Keep them close. Give them air and light. Water them daily and allow them to flower.

The pre-packaged life still isn’t all it’s wrapped up to be.