Thriving Wrong

Deferring dreams as a radical act of procrastination.

Woah, hi. It’s me, Emerging from my cave of mental lethargy. Days in the cave have really flown by! I suppose now is as good a time as any to resurface — new ideas are sparse, but I’ve run out of space on the cave walls to paint any more self-doubtful hieroglyphics with my flop sweat.

My resurgence in this format of alleged newsletter isn’t officially a New Year’s resolution thing, although I have nothing against the tradition. There are a lot of haters out there — some scholarly, some standard issue a-holes — arguing against the cliché of doing so but who cares? If you’ve decided that the changing over of the Gregorian calendar is the perfect time to decide to learn Mandarin, or how to change a tire, or what that exercise machine in the corner of the gym you rarely visit does, go for it. Without any hyperbolized understanding of my ambition’s limitation, I think it’s fun to look towards a fresh new three-sixty-five, as just that. Fresh.

A marketer at heart, I made the conscious decision to send this content a few days into January so as not to compete for your attention amidst compelling turn-of-year advertisements like *checks Promotions tab in Gmail*: NEW YEAR NEW BOOBS — 30% Off Bras You’ll Never Buy!!

I resume this installment I started writing two months ago around the season of annual debate about the relevancy of Daylight Saving Time. I understand this window has closed and I woefully regret the missed opportunity to go IN on the polarizing topic of wartime coal conservation during WWI. The only thing I will add is that one of the earlier proponents of the practice was an entomologist who wanted more hours of daylight so that he could spend more time searching for bugs. Hell yeah.

I respect the bug guy, but what I found most interesting about the practice of maximizing the well-lit chunk of the day, was how it created a swell in discourse around productivity and how to get more things done. I’ve always had a delicate relationship with this concept, as I’ve struggled to pinpoint what exactly it was that I was supposed to produce. As 2021 began to fully crystalize and we were bombarded with the various “Year in Review” content, I had no choice but to reflect.

Maybe I’m feeling a bit touchy about the subject because I bravely arrogantly foolishly made the public announcement back in June of 2021 that I was pausing my full-time career in marketing with the intention of becoming a writer. The Great Resignation whooshed me away with the shiny promise of temporary logged offed-ness and an open schedule for MAXIMUM creative output. I started clearing wall space in my apartment to prepare for all the framed accolades I’d surely accrue. Can a standard nail in drywall hold the weight of a Pulitzer? I wondered.

If my employment status was brought up at social events, I would jokingly confess that I was one of the fabled Millennials who opted out of gainful employment for something…else. For a short time it was fun to answer the obligatory getting-to-know-you question of What do you do? with the succinct response: I don’t!

What they don’t teach you in Quit Your Job School is that simply saying you’re going do something in the “following dreams” category has no actual effect on the output. Sure, I spent a lot of time thinking about writing, but when it came down to putting words to paper or internet, my brain often clamped shut like the mouth of a toddler staring down a spoon of mashed peas.

Oh dear. This was my version of a sabbatical! THIS was the time that I had allocated to myself to hemorrhage all the money I saved in exchange for pursuit of passion! It turns out I was more passionate about taking myself out to lunch in the middle of the week.

One summer Tuesday, I meandered into a white tablecloth Italian restaurant in midtown, underdressed, to enjoy a bowl of bolognese and a glass of Montepulciano. I was seated next to a table of businessmen who were hosting a group of other businessmen from Japan. As the head businessman raised a glass of limoncello in toast to “future partnership,” I thought This would be be something fun to write about. But instead I went home and took a nap.

This would go on for months. A devout procrastinator, my mind was conditioned to validate my stagnancy.

Years ago, I was forced against my will on a daily basis to wake up and become presentable in time to catch the 6:30am school bus. Given the unreasonably early call time, I hit the snooze button up until the last possible second in unrestful defiance. Eventually I could snooze no more and migrated to the shower as the penultimate step before departure. At some point I innovated a workaround to rousing from bed to bathe by physically laying down in the tub with my eyes closed (“sleeping”??) as the water cascaded (“cleaning”??) over me.

This counts as forward progress with the task at hand, I convinced myself. Bonus points if I didn’t drown.

It’s in this delusional spirit that I passed the back half of 2021. I was constantly in a vicious thought loop of knowing what I wanted to do without the desire to actually do it. Surely the luxurious weekday lunches and mornings spent reading at cafés were all part of the process.

“I NEED LEISURE TO SPARK IDEAS,” I yelled at strangers minding their own business.

“Some people say that doing nothing is actually as important as doing something,” I hoped was a thing that that some people say.

I was in a tailspin trying to retrofit productivity into the previous unemployed months as my inner monologue began to hiss at me about squandering precious time.

Today I remain blissfully unencumbered by a corporate structure but is it possible I’ve been thriving incorrectly? Or am I in between worlds, letting the scalding stream of inspiration marinate my potential for future use as it rests at the bottom of the bathtub?

To thriving however I see fit in 2022. Maybe some more writing, too.