Work work work ...

Work, rest, play and professional development

Last night I was lying on my couch, watching an average horror film, under the guise of catching up on the discourse. I received a meme from a writer friend who’s working very hard, to a deadline right now. There’s a particular sub-genre of Tik Tok/ insta which involves jokes about middle aged women who are just done with hustle culture.

I replied to my friend, I love how much we enjoy these jokes, and talking about how much we want to be lazy, when in fact we’re both incredibly driven, hard-working people.

I said, while lying on my couch on a Friday night.

I’m low key berating myself for being lazy, forgetting of course that I’m still resting as I overdid it working out the day before, and fainted from … dehydration? Not eating? Overdoing it? And I’m still feeling pretty ropey. Also, am pretty burnt out from my day job, and the mountain of work I need to do before I go on annual leave feels unscalable. Made all the more unscalable, due to the burnout, which means I need to break, which I nearly have, but …  

And round the merry go round we go. Round and round …

In my twenties I worked. A lot. Too hard, too much. Sixty-hour weeks working shitty jobs to make ends meet on top of studying, making theatre, being. A friend once said I’d work myself to death, a phrase that haunts me.

Reflecting on this, I know that objectively an hour of my working time now is equivalent to 3 or 4 hours of intellectual work in my twenties (and yes, I despise myself for making such a comparison, but I’m using it to try and soothe my anxiety so please go with it) but I’m still concerned about the number of creative hours I’m logging.  

At this point, I have a better work-life balance but still worry I’m not doing enough, not writing enough, not developing enough professionally or artistically. I know I shouldn’t worry, but I want to howl at the moon TEACH ME HOW NOT TO WORRY!!!!

I’m going hiking in about a week and a half and … I’m not ready. Though in truth, I’m never ready, I write this having coming back early from a walk that was too short, while I carried too little weight. I cut it short as I started to feel a worrying twinge in the side of my foot/ ankle, that I developed on the way to the theatre after another tough workout the previous week.

Teach me how not to worry about this. Because worst case scenario, I’m on an island off the coast of the Hebrides and I’m unable to complete my hike/ camp in the way that I would like. Which wouldn’t be a problem, if I didn’t wrap up my ability to achieve with my self-worth and value. Quelle fucking surprise.

This is a very long-winded way of saying, that I think I’m going to start working harder, but for the things that matter.