“I’m late, I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say ‘hello, goodbye,’ I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!“

The white rabbit – Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Hello my dear reader / travel companion. So we meet again. Sit down, take a virtual slice of cake. Any virtual tea ? 

While i am still stuck in my little cule-de-sac and decide which branch to cut or which leaf to pluck (if you haven’t about that click here: Lost in the boscage) we might aswell sit down together and i tell you about my white rabbit strategy.  One of the reasons i might got stuck. So spoiler alert – its a bit more personal (as it wouldn’t always be).

How do you cope with problems or situations that are too much for you? We all have our individual strategies. You know what is one of mine? Getting busy. Getting as busy as possible. Enroll in tasks and projects. Much like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. The one who is running through wonderland, always scared he is late. 

And when we are honest do we look at him and think he is crazy? Or do we agree with him, as it is really en vogue to have so many appointments. That gives you an air of importance. Everyone is so busy these days. 

And for me to keep busy was a welcome thing to do, just run, keep busy, don’t stop. As i would be chased and the moment i´d make a pause to take a deep breath whatever was following me would catch up with me. 

A little anecdote. Once someone asked me to spend 10 minutes by just sitting on a chair, doing absolutely nothing. No smartphone, no book, no music… nothing except … well, can you guess? My own thoughts. Easy task you might say. Well frankly speaking it stressed me out hours before i actually even started the task. And when i went on it i had to stop after very few minutes. Just sitting there and doing nothing left me in a feeling of absolute terror. 

Nowadays i am fortunately able to do nothing for more than 10 minutes without feeling threatened. But somehow it seems that i fell into old habits (old habits die hard, don’t they?). So i compensated something i couldn’t deal with in getting busy again. And in running, running as fast a i could. But you know what ? My strategy didn’t work ! Big surprise. 

Firstly because if you leave somewhere with something suspended somewhere, nothing will have changed there once you get back.

Secondly because my body decided that it won’t take that running thing anymore and showed me more than clearly that it´s done with my idea of dealing with things. 

And thirdly – well, you know what happens when you run and run, just to get away from one thing? You focus more on the path behind you and less on the path in front of you. And when you cannot run anymore you eventually might find yourself stuck. As you didn’t follow the path you really wanted but just any available path.   

So here i sit now, watching the huge hedge in front of me, taking a rest. A rest that i honestly did not chose, but that well… chose me. 

So if you are one of the people who – like me – think, the white rabbit strategy is a good one, it might work out for you, but be careful. Take rests in between all the running and don’t loose the path ahead of you.

Thanks for stopping by – now off you go to your own way and your own story again. And maybe next time you visit I tell you about another strategy i tested and well.. would not advise it either. A nice little mechanism i´d like to call „bottle it up“. 

So long 

A.