Brigid O’Dea: Find where your energy lies and follow that

In the mornings, I walk and watch the naked Germans swim.

I’m on my holidays.

I have come to Spain to escape cruel Irish weather. I am working remotely, which means eating tostadas, drinking beer, swimming and sitting at a laptop in my spare time.

I am here with two friends. They have come from Berlin, where their winter is yet colder and bleaker than a pallid Irish one. (It is not them I watch swim, but their compatriots. We have accidentally selected to stay in a village of retired Germans).

The benefits of exercise with . . . Type 2 diabetes

---

The guardians of the voice of the child

---

Irish coach at Man City sticking his oar in to help children with cancer

---

Freedom at last – then half the house tested positive

---

My German friends speak Spanish and their bodies move differently when they do. They gesticulate amorously, mouths pursed, hips swaying. All our bodies become more relaxed in the sun. We are longer, looser and bigger here.

We extend our trip a week.

In the second week, the sun goes on strike and the jumpers return. Our shoulders begin to curl inwards. We become cranky.

A tall red flag is erected on the beach. Splenetic white horses crash against the shore. A lone couple sit on loungers by the water's edge, dressed in thick scarves with blankets wrapped across their laps. As lonely as an Edward Hopper painting.

End of the world

On the palm tree-lined back streets, restaurants are deserted. Men selling bottles of water plead with us to buy packets of cigarettes. A film of dust coats my eyes. It feels as though the colour saturation of this scene has been wrung dry. Everything is muted. I wonder if this is what the end of the world will feel like.

In the apartment, we yawn at our laptops. A cat enters and we vie for her attention. Last week's Salsa Nueva York playlist has been replaced with Joni Mitchell.

The shower runs cold.

I’m reading George Saunders’ book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. He is talking about energy.

He writes: “When we ‘find our voice’, what’s really happening is that we’re choosing a voice from among the many voices we’re able to ‘do’, and we’re choosing it because we’ve found that, of all the voices we contain, it’s the one, so far, that’s proven itself to be the most energetic . . . We have to become whatever writer is capable of producing the most energy.”

He quotes Flannery O’Connor: “The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he makes live.”

I underline the entire page. I take a photo and send it to friends, upload another to Instagram. I forward one to my dad. His reply, a thumbs up.

I discuss Saunders’ wisdom on the phone, on Zoom. I feel validated. It makes sense. Find where your energy lies and follow that. In other words, write what you enjoy to write.

In many ways, I always knew that my writing always reads best when I enjoy the process of writing. When the writing drives me, not I the writing. But now, it seems, to follow this, I have been given permission.

When I was leaving secondary school, my dad advised me to take some time out before attending university. The Leaving Cert had put my health under extreme duress. I spent two weeks so high on pain, I was almost floating by the end of the examinations period. Not as nice as it sounds.

Impatient

My dad suggested I undertake a part-time course in acting or cooking, or “something that I enjoyed”. Your energy is limited, he counselled, use it for something that will feed your energy, not drain it.

I didn’t follow his advice. I was impatient, and keen not to “fall behind” my peers, but he was wise in his counsel.

We, the sickly, are often advised to preserve and manage our energy. Pace yourself. But there is benefit too in discovering the pursuits that are “capable of producing the most energy”. Not what preserves us, but what feeds us. In so far as is practical, of course.

We have one day left in the retirement village. We take a bus to a nearby beach; a green flag. We blast music on our phones like anarchistic teenagers. We share a can of Coke between three. Our salty lips are hot with chatter. Laughter returns.

The same bus driver that took us to the beach brings us home again. He looks at the sand coating our spirited faces. “You had fun?” he asks.

We did, we reply.

The energy has returned.