Idling

I found myself incredibly busy over the summer.  Not regular getting out in the nice weather while we have it busy, but extremely and unrelentingly doing ALL THE THINGS busy.  Every moment on my calendar was full and every time slot assigned.  I went on work trips, I went on vacation, I visited family, I went camping with friends, I helped family navigate illness and treatment, I played in sports tournaments, I attended memorials.  All while maintaining my regular workload and teaching at the dojo when I was in town.  I'm lucky my work is portable enough I can do it from almost anywhere.

I enjoyed all the things I did and the places I went, but the immense volume of coming and going was decidedly not enjoyable.  It was out of control.  Once I finally stopped moving, I could reflecting on all that action.  I realized I have had a long-standing practice of doing only the activities or projects I could justify as necessary or important.  I can't just go putter around my garden because I enjoy it; I have to make time for weeding the garden because the garden needs to be weeded.  Weeding is sufficiently important and therefore spending time in the garden is authorized.

Recently I have been working quite diligently to liberate myself from productivity based value and other societal bullshit I picked up by living and working in our modern world.  All the while laboring under the unfortunate falsehood that I still had to justify everything I was doing.  That belief was so deep I couldn't see it lurking under the surface and soaking into everything else I was thinking and doing.  No wonder I couldn't imagine a way to function in the world other than the self control and containment strategies I've been employing for decades.

I'm glad I finally could see it, even if it took overdoing it for almost this entire year to finally be able to look at it.  It was a painful realization and I tried to go easy on myself for having bought into the lie for so long.  We collect the baggage we accumulate because it helps us survive.  However uncomfortable the process of unearthing and examining it, I had to see the narrative running in the background before I could choose something different.  And I needed to select a new base program to move forward and build the life I want Future Me to live in.  

And now my entire existence has been reshaped by the after-effects of Covid.  I can’t participate in many of my regular activities because my body physically can't do them.  For the first few weeks, I just didn't do those things.  Like I was on vacation from regular life and would be returning at any moment.  I haven't wanted to replace those hobbies, outlets, and events with new things because I want to feel like I will get to go back to my regularly scheduled programming at some point.  But while that helped me maintain a certain volume of hope for a full recovery, it is also another kind of idling.

It allowed me to temporarily avoid processing all my disappointment in my current circumstance as well as my feelings of inadequacy and incompleteness.  Being physically strong and agile is an enormous slice of my personality pie.  Suddenly loosing that capability has been devastating, and finding new outlets for my need to move my body and sweat has been a challenge.  I feel like a completely differently shaped person.  I'm ready to find out just how many amazing things this new body can do, I just need a little time to settle in and understand who is this new me.

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Information and Inspiration

• The New Yorker: China’s Age of Malaise
• Medium: Kanye’s wife: a (naked) handmaid
• YouTube: Audre Lorde reads Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power (FULL Updated)
• Facebook: Awesome Things - When Allyson Felix became pregnant
• The New York Times: Scientists Offer a New Explanation for Long Covid
• Bloomberg: The Case for Guerrilla Crosswalks