I’m reading Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gayle. I’m only at the start of it and he’s describing how the protagonist’s mother and father met. Both of them are servants and he describes how hard their work is, their lives are, with very little time off, and falling into bed exhausted at night. Last Thursday evening I did a running race out in the countryside, and driving home at around 8:30 I noticed a farmer out doing something in his field, on a tractor, and was thinking about how hard farmers work, still out there at 8:30 and probably going to be up very early the next day.
I couldn’t help think about how easy my own life is. I do quite little work, but almost in counterpoint to that, I worry a lot. I sometimes feel like anxiety is a constant accompaniment in my life. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I ran an ultramarathon a couple of weeks ago. I was incredibly nervous about it. Very stressed, to the point of wishing I wasn’t doing it, wishing it was all over and promising myself I’d never do anything like it again. But once the race started, although it wasn’t necessary very enjoyable, I wasn’t really worried anymore. There were some issues to think about, like some shooting pain through my hamstrings very early on, and a bit of a sick feeling around half way, as well as a little bit of concern that I was going to be last in the team. But by and large, the doing of the event was a lot less anxiety-filled than the two weeks preceding it.
All of which has made me wonder if I might be able to cure or at least lessen my anxiety by doing more. I think I touched on this idea in this post where I wondered if I could stop myself worrying about the next big even in my life, my upcoming holiday perhaps, by preparing for it, possibly even weeks in advance, packing my suitcase, washing my clothes, buying supplies etc. But what I’m considering now is taking that a step further and maybe to a more general level. The question I’m asking myself is “Can I drive away anxiety by filling my days with work?”
This being the age it is, the age of self care and doing less, and with me coming from this philosophy of idleness, the play instead of work movement, the four-hour work week book of Tim Ferriss, that question immediately raises the counterargument that busy work is a bad thing, a dysfunctional thing. That a lot of people just run around doing doing doing in an attempt to drive out the underlying emptiness, and instead we do need to slow down, practise mindfulness, stop and smell the roses.
I hated going out to work and working for someone else. That’s why I started my freelance business in the first place. I wanted to have more time for the stuff I loved. But. That doesn’t necessarily mean I wanted to actually be idle. One of the reasons I hated going out to work was that I was really idle at work. I was bored. There was never enough for me to do. I also hated sitting down and being inside all day every day, especially in winter when there was little enough sunlight as it was. Also I want to have more time to DO the stuff I loved, not to sit around and do nothing.
So I suppose the question I’m asking is not whether I can drive out anxiety by filling my days with work, per se, but with action, activity, carefully chosen tasks. Reading a book in the sunshine for half an hour could, therefore, be just as valid an activity as scrubbing the kitchen floor.
All this is to say, really, that I want to plan my days more intentionally, instead of just focusing on getting a few things done that I really have to and then letting the rest of the day drift into TV, eating, mindless and fairly boring “rewards”. Because, although occasionally and intentionally choosing to watch something on TV could be a good reward for working hard throughout the day, a lot of the time I feel like I do it as a default. I can’t really think of anything else to do and I know that turning on the TV or YouTube will help me to switch off and forget about my worries.
So today I’m kickstarting a life reset. I’m not banning TV altogether but I am trying to implement some new habits to replace the TV. I’m trying to be more intentional, to be more aware of where I’m spending my time, and I want to try to see work differently, as something enjoyable and productive and anxiety-banishing.
My goal, as always, is simply to be happy, which for me means less anxiety, better health, more energy, better sleep, feeling more productive and prouder of my choices, living in a better environment, taking better care of myself, and feeling more relaxed and loving, towards myself and others. I believe that achieving that goal will take a combination of changing my thoughts, and changing the actions I take.
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