I experienced life among the
ambivalently employed for many years. Contract jobs that ended when funding ran
out. Jobs I quit or was fired from. And jobs that were part time or seasonal to
begin with. Which meant a fair amount of time between jobs, usually but not
always looking or waiting for that next gig.
Which is to say, I have more experience
than most dealing with weeks and months of unstructured time. To someone who has
worked non-stop with only the occasional vacation, managing a long stretch of
time off may be a huge challenge. So I thought that in this period of Corona
crisis I might pass along a tip or two on how to survive your unasked-for break
from routine.
This is all very basic, survival level advice. And yet, most of it wasn’t
very apparent – or I just didn’t consider it important – my first couple of
times around this particular block. When all you’ve done is work, it’s easy to
develop a romantic sense of what it’s like not to have to work. But time not
working is as subject to the pressures and realities of life as time working.
Maybe the first point to make is
that, while the dials on the clock will spin the same when you aren’t working
as when you do, you have to take relativity into account. When asked to explain
his famous theory, Einstein once said that it was about the difference between
the hour you spend waiting for your lover and the hour you spend with you lover
before you have to part. In short, the time between you and what you want is
always going to feel a lot longer than the time between you and something you
dread.
When you’re working, you can’t
wait til the end of the day, the weekend, or the upcoming vacation. You
fantasize about a long leave, or retirement. Ahhh … the places you’ll go, the
people you’ll see, the amazing accomplishments you’ll rack up on a weekly
basis.
Sadly, it just ain’t so. You see,
all that time is gonna shrink to a fraction of what it used to be when you had
to work through it. In relative terms, the eight hours that once consumed your
entire life becomes reduced to about an hour and forty-five minutes. So don’t
be shocked or outrageously disappointed when after a full day you only tick off
about one tenth of your optimistic to-do list.
Now, having taken that first step
of re-calibration – having some sort of to-do list can be crucial. I don’t have
any doubt that the major lament of people upon returning to work is that they
didn’t do most of the things they intended to do. They may then exaggerate what
they actually did, leaving them shamed about being even lazier than people
already think they are.
So, have a to-do list, but don’t
get carried away with it. My advice is not to start with special projects, but
with basic life maintenance and self-care. I mean stuff like eating right,
exercising, some type of positive contact with others, some mental activity.
These are all areas that may have been somehow proscribed or aligned by work,
but in the vacuum, there’s suddenly nothing. And the initial temptation may be
just to let it all go. But there’s the great danger, experienced in the past by
yours truly, that your routine will devolve into a pattern of late nights, Netflix
and ice cream.
I found a good approach was to look at each area of my life and set a
daily standard to meet. Areas like: mental, physical, emotional, spiritual,
interpersonal, social and creative. These areas overlap a lot, but the idea is
to address each of these needs most days, if not every day.
A sample set of activities might be: stretching in the morning;
meditation; journaling; a bike ride in the afternoon; always having something to
read; and an email or call to a friend or two. Doing all of these things takes
up a fair chunk of a day. And it automatically adds enough structure to prevent
you from going off a deep end. If you lay whatever special, creative project
inspires you on top of that foundation, it keeps you in balance. My own
creative outlet usually has to do with writing, but it could be almost anything.
A very important piece for me is to also have some limits. If I don’t
keep a lid of three hours on my television viewing, it can easily become six or
eight or ten. And when that happens, I can usually wave goodbye to that day’s
meditation or bike ride or writing. Another good limit for me is marijuana and
alcohol consumption. Toking up a couple of times a week or less is perfect for
me. At that frequency, my highs actually stimulate me to be more active. But if
it becomes close to a daily habit? Well, that’s when the late nights, Netflix
and ice cream take over.
My last bit of advice is to go easy on yourself. These are all simple
things to do. But they are also easy to miss. I’ve always been challenged to
attend to each of my life areas every day. I don’t punish myself if I miss
something. The beauty of not having an externally imposed structure is in
freedom and flexibility and feeling. I allow myself to feel my way through most
of this. If I’m sensitive to myself, my body reminds me that I need to move
more, that I’m not eating well, that I’ve been toking too much herb or sitting
too long in front of the tv.
Nothing in my life has taught me to be sensitive to myself like
meditation. I can’t recommend it too highly. And if you like where I’m coming
from, and would like to explore a method of meditation to take up, here’s a
link you can follow: www.dhamma.org
Happy self-isolating everyone!
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