I’ve been having a lot of conversations about productivity lately.
it seems to be the #1 concern for us middle-class folk relatively unaffected by the, y’know, global pandemic we’re going through right now. no shade, I know it’s a very first-world problem, but it’s legit because we derive a lot of our self worth from productivity. that said, being productive in a time of global pandemic is… [chuckles nervously]
there’s been a lot of productivity discourse floating around. in the early days of lockdown, everyone seemed to have been doing The Most at any given point. cooking, baking, painting, reading, watching, working out, etc. etc.
And then when we slowly realised that the pandemic wasn’t going anywhere, we tried confronting our hyper-productivity with something more realistic: the concept that productivity =/= self worth, and therefore Spending The Whole Day in Bed is Actually Okay! (this was my favourite discourse, hands down)
now we’ve kinda reached the point where we try to ignore the P-word and do whatever we need to do to get through the day
of course these were only the popular conversations and I’m willing to bet YOUR lockdown journey must have looked completely different. mine sure was, for a lot of reasons, the first being that at the very start of lockdown I found out that a good friend had passed away, and in response to that my body and mind kind of shut down. this was also around the time that I joined my job, so I threw myself into work while also never getting out of bed because, y’know, #WFH
then I decided to pivot, and quit my job, and I’ve spent the last month doing a whole lot of nothing
maybe you’ve also struggled against grief during this lockdown. or maybe your biggest adversary was lethargy, or a lack of privacy, or you simply miss your friends. maybe your struggles have been financial, as some of mine were, because nobody is totally immune to the world coming to a grinding halt. or maybe you’ve been hyper-productive without the distractions that usually bog you down. whatever it may be, I know you’re thinking about productivity. I’m thinking about productivity. we’re kinda wired to measure ourselves by the things we put out into this world.
last week I read Hank Green’s ‘A Beautifully Foolish Endeavour’, and besides being an exhilarating read, there was this one take on productivity that I had never thought to consider before:
"You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce."
I actually had to put the book away after reading that line. can you believe he wrote that pre-pandemic? “YOUR OWN JOY CAN BE SOMETHING YOU PRODUCE”? WHAT?
it reminded me immediately of something my sister said to me a few years ago: “why are you so allergic to letting yourself be happy?”
which felt kinda rude in the moment, but the sentiment was more or less correct. I’ve struggled with mental health issues all my life, but I’ve done very little to address them. so I’ve tried therapy, but that ended up taking a bigger financial toll than expected, and anyway I’m pretty much the worst at “opening up” even if I’m literally paying the other person to listen. I’ve tried working out but I’ve also stopped at the slightest hint of resistance from my own mind. anyone with mental health issues can attest that it’s the most difficult thing in the entire world to make yourself do something when your mind doesn’t want to do it. my mind, for one, always wants to wallow. also, I’m just about the laziest person ever, which plays a pretty big factor.
but besides all that, I’ve also viewed my abstract goals of “joy” and “peace” as things that will come to me as the long-term fruits of doing other things, like years and years of working out, and hours and hours of praying, and so on. it never really occurred to me that i could feel those things today, NOW, that I could simply produce them myself.
all of this sounds really abstract, I know, but I’m gonna try and illustrate it for you, because this past week I tried my best to manufacture joy.
for one, i joined an exercise class.
have you ever exercised with a bunch of people over video call? I’ve gotta say, it more effective than you can imagine. besides the fact that I more or less died on my first day, I really like the routine of it. waking up at 8, eating a handful of dry fruits, logging into Skype and wishing my instructor a good morning, and then cheerfully giving her full authority over my body for the next hour. it’s less sexy than it sounds, and I’ve been limping around for most of the week, but it’s been worth it.
I also began praying more.
by more, i mean every day. this is something i’ve struggled with A LOT lately, because ever since my friend passed away I’ve been pretty pissed off with the big man up in the sky. the two-week youth conference thing I attended on Zoom helped me to be less pissed off, but we still had unresolved issues that I was unwilling to address. but this week, I gave it my best shot. after exercise, breakfast, and a hot shower, I sat by the window, read the daily Gospel, and then tried to pray. like day one of exercise, day one of prayer was pretty tough. it was lots of crying and very little praying. but day two was easier, and by day four I was kind of looking forward to it. I even put on some worship songs and did a little jam on my own. it was nice.
and i met some people this week
cautiously, of course, and with the required social distancing measures. I had been avoiding this too, partly because of the global pandemic, but mostly because (as above) my mind loves to wallow. and it’s so much easier to feel alone when you’ve done most of the isolating yourself. so I reached out to a couple of friends and made plans. we went for long walks in the evening and talked about our lockdown lives. I video called a few friends I’d been avoiding (I’m sorry.) for the past few months. I felt better, fuller, less alone.
this sounds like a happy ending!
it’s really not though. on wednesday, after my morning workout, i went into the kitchen to make breakfast and ended up sitting on the floor and crying for a good half hour. why? i don’t know. i just felt really terrible about a lot of things and didn’t know how to stop. a few nights this week i couldn’t sleep because my mind wouldn’t shut up about how my entire life has been pretty much a failure and nobody cares about me (both of which are lies, obviously, but easy to believe under a blanket of darkness).
all of this to say that the battle isn’t won, or can’t be won, or maybe it’s not a battle but a pilgrimage with no end.
a happy outcome is that i’ve had more peaceful moments this week than i’ve had in the past four months. I feel better about my body. I feel better about my faith. I’m going to try my best to make next week the same, but it’ll probably be worse, although there is a 2% chance that it might be better, and that’s what I’m gunning for.
it’s actually a really difficult decision to choose to be happy. it’s a lot of work! and every step of the way i find myself wanting to give up and wallow till the end of time. I’m hoping the people I love (& if you’re still reading this, that’s you!) are willing to hold me accountable to this decision. and if you choose this for yourself, I’m ready to remind you every day.
I’m really nervous to put this out there because I hate when people talk about happiness. I’m always thinking, it’s not that simple, and really, it’s not. you gotta take the bits that work for you and drop the rest. I’ve heard so much about being happy but the only bit that worked for me was when hank green wrote your own joy can be something you can produce. and i’m only writing this with the hope that you might find something in this post that works for you.
until next time.
Georgia O’Keeffe, in a letter to Russel Vernon Hunter, from Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters
Art by René Magritte