Thursday! 2-29: Let's Be Off the Clock
Volume 2, Issue 29
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Elyse Myers, so let me tell you a little about her. She’s a regular person who spent a lot of her life being awkward and painfully-introverted. She chased affection and approval across the globe, quite literally, until she finally settled down just long enough for love and her own good self to find her. She makes videos on Instagram in which she tells stories about her own awkwardness and the things — good and bad — that she’s done in service of the life she thought she wanted. She’s goofy and vulnerable, funny and talented. Above all, she is consistently, brightly encouraging. She did a short video recently that got into the back of my head and nudged me to thought a couple or five times. Take a minute or two to watch. She begins with the question: What’s my favorite way to spend a day off?
Quite the answer, huh? Turns out, her answer and mine aren’t very far apart. I ruin entirely too many days off with worry and judgement. I replace the joy with worry, rejuvenation with fretting, and renewal with guilt. And I need to stop that.
This is not a paean against work or productivity. We are created to work as well as to rest. We might want to spend our days at leisure, but we are not at out best when our life is (for lack of a better term) too relaxed. We need work every but as much as we need love and acceptance and growth and rest. That doesn’t mean we need to swing to the extreme productivity side of things. The “hustle culture” isn’t our ideal culture any more than the communal dream of leisure and art. We need both in sufficient measure to fill us up, empty us some, fill us up some more, and keep our bodies and minds healthy and growing.
However, we have gotten ourselves a bit wrapped around the axle of right now, haven’t we? I’ll tuck part of this subject away for later, but one of the problems we’ve made for ourselves in the modern day is the problem of empty space. Once upon a time, it took a woman all day to do the household laundry. Thanks to the washing machine, it takes perhaps a couple of hours. A man might spend a day chopping wood and working the garden plot. Today, he uses a hydraulic tool and goes to the local produce stand or grocery store and gets all that done in half the time, or more quickly. We’ve created hours upon hours of “free” time and…what? What have we done with that time?
We promptly filled it with more stuff. We didn’t save that time very well. We spent it on more now now gimme gimme. We forgot just how much we need time to do, well, nothing. I don’t think we’re any happier for it. In fact, I think we’re miserable, though most of us aren’t all that willing to admit it. We look at ourselves on Sunday evening and think we’ve failed because we didn’t get a ton of stuff done over the weekend, then we look at the next five days and start filling them with chores and projects and hustles and action items and whatever else slangy, trendy term we’ve found to fool our souls into thinking that the constant scrambling around to be useful is actually good for us.
Let me tell you a little thing. You are useful, just as you are. You don’t need the hustle life to make you useful. Working yourself to a frazzle isn’t going to make you more valuable to the people who love you. You’re there. Now. Right now.
But you want to be more, right? More useful? Better? Okay. I hear you.
Get off the clock. Stop working. Stop fretting about work — whatever you think work is. I don’t just mean the 40-hour gig that pays your bills. I mean the writing work you think you must do right now because you’re falling behind and you’ll never catch up! Take time off from that, too. Give yourself some room to breathe and think and rejuvenate. It will help, more than you can imagine. You’ll get strength back and creativity and some joy, too. You need work but you also need rest.
Sit on your porch or by the window. Enjoy the bids singing or the breeze through the trees. Walk in an art gallery or listen to music with the headphones on so all you can hear are the tunes. Get outside for a bit, if the pollen will allow you (and it might not because pollen HATES SOME OF US SO MUCH). Look at the shadows cast by the leafy branches on the grass. Watch people walking around the mall. Imagine conversations but don’t do anything with them. You’re not working. You’re off the clock. You punched out already and no boss has claim on your time, not even the boss who lives in your brain.
We are officially halfway through what we’ve come to call the “work week”. You may want to start worrying about how much you have yet to do and all the things you haven’t done. Please don’t. You’ll get done what you need to get done. You’re smart enough and disciplined enough to handle what needs to be handled without grinding yourself to a numb stump. I know you are. I believe in you. You should, too.
See, here’s the thing. Saturday is coming and we’re not going to ruin it. Might as well practice that not-ruining thing now, right? Tell me how it works, okay? I’m right here, giving it a shot just like you.
What I Wrote Last Week
You might think from recent newsletters that I’ve stopped writing on my web site altogether. But no! “A Conversation I Recently Had with a Bee” is right there, just waiting for you. I’ll get back on my site more often in coming weeks. For now, this is where my creative bent is, and I’d be foolish not to play there a while and see what i can learn from doing.
One Last Thing
If you like my art and want to support me, here’s how:
First, share Thursday! with all your most clever and discerning friends.
Second, buy my first book of poetry. It has werewolves and a giant atomic monster!
Third, become a Patreon subscriber! The best thing about the arts these days is that you can be a patron just like the wealthiest Borgia or Rockefeller. I think that’s cool. Click the link, pick a level of support, and help me do what I do even more and better.