It can be helpful to think of your life as a finite space that routinely needs tending to in order to best manage your time, attention, energy, and ultimately your wellbeing.
To engage with something is to grant it space:
The problems you try to solve take up space.
The relationships you engage in take up space.
Your hopes, worries, aspirations and fears all take up space.
It’s not unusual to encounter situations where you want to engage with something — a new relationship, a new project, a new hobby — only to discover that you do not have the time, the attention, the energy for it.
To make space you might reframe your worries as small stuff that isn’t worth sweating or thinking about.
You might evaluate the relationships you’ve committed to and make a conscious decision to disengage from some of them.
You might look at the problems or hobbies you’re pursuing and make a decision to drop some of them.
In some cases you might be making space to welcome something else into your life; in other cases you may be making space simply because there are things that are no longer worthy of your time, attention, and energy.
There is no mandate to have every square inch of your life accounted for — it’s perfectly okay to have open space.
In either case, just because you know something is no longer worth your time, attention, and energy doesn’t mean it’s easy to let it go.
It takes time, and during that time remember to be especially patient and kind with yourself.