Tortoise power

A week ago, my flatmate handed in her PhD.

She has been working on this for seven years.

I am trying to give up superlatives as part of my quest to become a more boring person, but in this case I need superlatives to do her justice. She has been so dedicated, so brave, so determined. I spent much of Monday in tears, not from sadness but because it has been remarkably moving to watch.

I have always been a hare rather than a tortoise. I am great at rapid, flashy jobs. If a task is going to take less than a day, I’m your man; no-one is faster or more energised. But most tasks don’t take less than a day. And my biggest task right now is recovery from addiction, which is all about changing the way I think, and changing the way I think will take a lot longer than a day. If I’m to achieve that, I need tortoise skills, not hare skills.

Most of all, I need a tortoise mindset. I need to be able to do a little bit of work every day. I need to be able to move on slowly, day after day after day, without knowing how long it’s going to take or where it’s going to end up. I need to be willing to give up thinking about the future, because the future’s too far away to contemplate and if I think about it then I will lose heart. Instead, I need to be in the present, keeping my little head down and tortoising along, one day at a time. This is going to take me months, and maybe years. And I can’t fast-forward any of it. There are no shortcuts.

I’ve never achieved anything through sustained work. I’ve achieved a reasonable amount in my time, but it’s always been through using a gift that’s so natural to me that I hardly notice it. This has its payoffs – I’ve got a lot done without having had to go to very much trouble. But it has a cost, as well. It’s left me with the belief that I can only do hare. And now I need tortoise.

Thirty-six feels old to be learning tortoise for the first time. And changing the way I think is a big project for my first lesson in tortoise. But I’m learning that tortoise works on anything. In the last five weeks, I’ve written an essay, a lengthy case study, a research proposal and a detailed description of the research methods for my dissertation. That’s 15,000 words, or a sixth of a PhD. And I’ve done it tortoise, plodding along slowly, one day at a time.

And that’s how I’ll do recovery. Every day I’ll do a bit of prayer, a bit of meditation, a bit of step work, a bit of writing. Or I might only do the prayer. I’ll talk to my sponsor, or one of my sponsees. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll go to a meeting. Or maybe I’ll take the evening off and spend it with my flatmate playing with the cats, or lying in the bath reading Golden Age detective novels. (Recovering addicts have such interesting lives.) Because this is what tortoises do.

And, slowly, day by day, I’ll make progress. I’ll get through the steps, one day at a time. I’ll learn to change my habits. I’ll leave behind my old beliefs and behaviours, and make amends to all the people I’ve hurt. I’ll be a different person. It won’t happen overnight, but I’ll get there, in my little tortoise way.

And then, who knows? Maybe even a PhD.