What if the detours are the point?

The problem with “protecting my time.”

Just go on the walk.

Anyway! is a free weekly newsletter about building a meaningful life in deeply bizarre times.

This morning I was pumped to go for a run in the sun. It’s springy as hell in Salt Lake City, and balancing creative writing with a baking job means it can be hard to find a window for dedicated workouts that is not pre-dawn and also not occurring when my feet and lower back feel thwacked with a fire extinguisher. I went to bed early (enough). I scheduled the coffee ahead of time (bless those who can raw-dog a run). I set my alarm. I actually got up when it blared.

And then I bumped into my sweet, hot, bleary-eyed husband in the hallway of our home. “I don’t feel so good, baby,” he said. “I think I’m going to go on a walk.” Obviously, I could have responded, “Aw, feel better, byeeeeeeee!” Initially, I felt a jolt of annoyance at the disruption of my well-laid plans. But I hate to see him going through it — and I’m very in love with him. So I decided to hold his hand and walk around the neighborhood sipping my coffee instead.

The point is that I’m extremely prone to seeing moments like this as interruptions — detours away from what I’m meant to be doing. Friends call when I need to binge a research paper for a project. An email about my book marked “urgent” arrives when I finally have room to meditate. My husband needs a little mental health walk when I’d planned to run. British author Oliver Burkeman sums up the perniciousness of this framing in his book, Meditations for Mortals:

“When we define some of these things as interruptions of, or distractions from, other ones, we’re adding a mental overlay to the situation, sorting events into hard categories of those which ought and ought not to happen.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that; it’s fine to have strong preferences for how you’d like your day to unfold. But at the very least, it’s a reminder not to cling so confidently to those preferences that you turn life into a constant struggle against events you’ve decided, futilely, shouldn’t be happening. Or that you close off the possibility that what looks like an interruption might in fact prove a welcome development.”

Later that same day, my work friend watched me start making a huge batch of strawberry-rhubarb jam (laced with toasted fennel seeds) for our chia puddings when I only had about 40 minutes left before I had to leave for an appointment. Then I suggested I might start making confit garlic to add to our biscuit dough. “Girl, I love to watch you bite off so much all of the time, but I do wonder if it ever gets hard to chew,” she observed from her station, pureeing oranges.

She wasn’t wrong. I am such a chronically busy person (avoidant? me?!) that I treat my Google Calendar like an endangered ecosystem that could collapse at any moment. My time feels like this thing I constantly need to be protecting, optimizing, and structuring just right. But I rarely stop to ask what, exactly, I’m guarding it from. If the check-ins from loved ones, the unexpected deadlines for projects I am deeply connected to, and the inconveniently timed strolls are what I’m pushing away — then what I am pushing away is actually my life.

My husband messaged me while I was frantically stirring the jam, hot goop smattering my arms: “Thank you for taking me for a walk today. Thank you for caring for me on such a deep, deep level.” Maybe the “interruption” wasn’t the obstacle of the day. Maybe it was the day.

Anyway! Three questions for you:

• What’s something unavoidable that you consider an interruption? How might you embrace it instead?

• When was the last time an unexpected detour ended up feeling strangely meaningful afterward? What made it so?

• What are you always trying to protect your time for? Do you actually spend the time you already have doing that thing?