I ignored the warning; look what happened.
I ignored the warning; look what happened.
When the light on the dashboard goes off, best to look under the hood.
I’ll just come out and say it, shall I?
I don’t really know what happened to my June and July this year. They kind of got lost (or I got lost). Apart from obligations, hardly anything else got done. For sure, nothing in the category of creative or not-urgent-but-important stuff was even attempted. Forget about goals and quarterly plans; those were studiously ignored.
You might say, what’s the big deal? It’s summer. Everybody slows down in the summer and takes their vaca. But you see, this wasn’t like that. This felt more like a withdrawal, a backing away from reality... well, my reality.
A friend asked — delicately — if something had happened that caused the fleeing and the hiding. Since I’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression before, I appreciated the question. But I knew what the “d” felt like; this wasn’t it.
In truth, I’m not surprised that this happened. It was foreshadowed. The light on the dashboard had been blinking. But the warning was being ignored. No wonder it broke down.
My operating system had been signaling it needed a reboot but none was planned, so it took charge and forced the issue.
At the end of May, I hid in my cave and disengaged from the real world. On the other hand, though, I was entirely engaged — dare I say living in a whole other world.
What possessed me to re-read all seven Harry Potter books? And when that was done, I was bewitched — bewitched, I say! — to tackle Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy. Cross my heart, I am generally not into the magical worlds of wizards and witches and vampires and daemons and such. (Or maybe I developed a taste and just didn’t know?!?)
Sure, there were lucid moments during those lost weeks, during which I managed to talk some sense to myself in an increasingly panicked voice. “Lou, what are you doing? You gotta stop this. What are you doing? You have things to do, goals to pursue. What are you doing? Get back to your life!”
Alas, it took about nine weeks, into the beginning of August, for the wake-up calls to finally register. And when I woke up, I was disoriented and shocked. I likened it to a bear waking up from a long hibernation. What in the world? I went to bed in May, it’s August?!?
• • •
Earlier in the year, the idea of slowing down suddenly became an irresistible idea. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and talking about it. I picked up books on the subject: Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity, Celeste Headlee’s Do Nothing, Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing. I binge-listened to the Hurry Slowly podcast. The Pocket app overflowed with articles.
But it was all in my head, you see. I’m embarrassed to admit it had all been a mental exercise. I was nodding my head vigorously but not actually doing anything. The plate looked as full as ever. The goals were not being adjusted (despite my proclaimed plan of reprioritizing the projects), the schedule tight as it had always been.
And most telling, I was still answering, “I’m soooo busy.” when asked how I was doing — and secretly feeling chuffed that I was oh, so busy. Have I not learned anything? (bows head in shame.)
• • •
The thing is, it’s not like I forgot all about my “productive plans” while I was hiding in the cave. There was the voice… you know that voice… that nagged every chance she got, pointing to the growing list of tasks, making me feel guilty for checking out. The result being I couldn’t even truly enjoy the unplanned downtime. Talk about a double whammy.
But you know, it’s all good in the end. (The silver lining, y’all.) Sometimes, we must be forced to see the mess to realize we need to open the windows and do a major house cleaning.