“So, what have you been up to?” my friend asks from behind her plate of pad thai. This is the first time I’ve seen her since over a month ago, a symptom of everybody being grown up now and time slipping through our fingers until one day we look up and it’s May.
HOW IS IT MAY?
Despite having a month’s worth of things pass, I can’t think of anything to say to answer her question. What HAVE I been up to? There’s always petty stories of work drama that no one wants to hear, there’s the fact that I haven’t been able to do laundry at my house in a month (don’t get me started), but what have I been doing? Sleeping. Drinking. Stress eating.
Oh. Well, that’s not great.
I tell her about how I feel like work is eating my face. Not that there is so very much of it to do, not that the hours are longer or harder than usual, but mainly that everything, every little thing, feels like trying to push a boulder up a hill. Every victory comes with an equal helping of frustration. Sometimes a little extra frustration is thrown in as a bonus. Sometimes you watch your work languish on a test server for months.
It’s not terrible or anything; I like my job and I like feeling useful. It’s just that sometimes that boulder is so tiring. I’m usually OK on my at-home days when there’s enough energy left to go to the gym or take a long walk, but the in-office days have started leading to this unsettling pattern of coming home and either falling asleep at 7pm or drinking half a bottle of wine. At most, I might have energy to play some video games before falling asleep at 9:30 with the TV on. If you’re not careful, all of life gets divided into “things I have to do” and “sitting here trying to recover from doing the things I had to do,” and there never seems to be time or energy or will for the things you want to do.
I know this pattern when it shows up. It usually means that I need to take a good look at whatever the problem is, and then take a good look at my free time. Somewhere there is a hobby that is not getting attention, a piano not getting played, a sewing machine not getting used, a camera gathering dust. Something about the frustration of being a human on Earth creeps into the things we love, and we start not wanting to do those things, too. Every time I think about those things I love, a little voice peeks in its stupid little head:
“What’s the point?”
“Excuse me, little voice? What?”
“What. Is. The. Point,” it repeats, putting invisible clap emojis between each word. “You don’t play because you don’t make enough time to play, which means you end up getting bored playing the same things all the time. And also, what is the end game here? And don’t forget that there are roughly 58,000 people on YouTube who can play this song better than you can. And the sewing? Girl, you know you could just get a dress on ThredUp for like $15. The pictures are I fine, I guess, but pictures of what? I think you have lost the spirit of exploration there. Did you see the pictures you took in Germany? Not a damn one that wasn’t just taken at eye level. Not a damn one that wasn’t some quick snap you grabbed as fast as possible because it was cold or windy or you didn’t have a lot of time. And so, so many that were over exposed in a spot. Damn, dude.”
Little voice is right. I had to retouch every one of those Germany pictures. The only even moderately creative thing I’ve done in months is continuing to decorate my house. One’s house, by definition, is a place where you can do what you want. You please yourself. Hang a piano upside down from your living room ceiling if you want. Most people will never know what you’ve done and those that do won’t care. Home decor is the one spot where Little Voice gets no pull. Your house is a space you do only for you.
“I’m going to paint these twenty wall sconces matte black and hang them all on one wall in the bedroom.”
“Isn’t that a bit much?” asks little voice.
“That. Is. Exactly. The. Point.” I answer, this time with my own imaginary clap emojis.
So I decided to just start telling Little Voice to shut up. I stopped tuning out the unfinished bedroom project. I went to JoAnn Fabrics and talked to some nice lady about projects we wanted to work on. We showed each other cat pictures. She tried to warn me that “quilting is addictive.” I got some frames for the Germany pictures that were deemed “pretty decent.” I looked at pricing on sergers, wondering if that would be a good first step to making “workout dresses” for myself. (Workout dresses exist, but cost $100 each. I could probably make one for $20.)
Later in our lunch, my friend thanked me for making her a print of one of the Germany pictures that she’d said she liked. Flummoxed, I said something about how it was no big deal, how prints at Sam’s are cheap. What I meant was “oh my God, thank you for liking my stuff. Thank you for caring about this thing I did.”
Ideas have started to come again, and I am excited about them.
