flowers on my neck
from the spare hours i am awake to the moment i fall into deep sleep, whilst friends take vacations to picturesque mountains clad with snow-tipped peaks and others to cities bustling with life, i find myself staring off into space, worried and wondering what the future holds. in the heat of the summer, i find myself wrought with less than lukewarm thoughts — particularly, how difficult the upcoming days will be.
here’s a simple thought for a difficult day today. believing that change can happen in this world is hard; it is intentional and it takes focus and energy and action. i remind myself to avoid shutting out the bad; and instead, to take it in and in the face of all of it, to choose to do good. to keep going. remembering that there are people who believe in me. and that they’re cheering for me.
as i begin to view productivity not as a mechanism for tangible output but one that involves a level of “self-care” coupled with the efficiency it brings, i have started to re-evaluate what the definition of productivity really is. i know that it is productive for my well-being and mental health to take care of myself, being selfish regardless of who it may impact (negatively or not, not my problem), to recharge, to spend time with the people i love, to spend time doing things i enjoy. and that doing this isn’t considered “productive” because it helps me put myself in a better position to create some sort of output later on, but because i am actively improving my well-being.
it seems that “output” is by default, the only metric by which we quantify productivity, simply because it is the simplest to quantify. well-being, on the other hand is harder to quantify, so we don’t talk about it as something we can work on.
we romanticize phrases like “self care”, “loving yourself”, etc., as tokens of expression regarding the hurdles that are naturally faced when dealing with adversity, especially in the realm of being productive. but through mental illness and the discussion behind it being amplified through social media, we find more people purporting the importance of living productive lives coupled with a consistent understanding of self-worth.
but i feel that the romanticization of phrases such as the aforementioned inculcate deeply negative aspects of mental illness in people and inadvertently gloss over what actually being productive really means. when this happens, things like mental illness are reduced to nothing more than debilitating personality traits, or used as excuses. i blame social media for this, but can you really blame social media for anything? people consume what it brings voluntarily. in turn, they create what they consume, creating a never ending cycle of bullshit.
if you are unable to uncouple your self worth from your productivity because your struggles render you unable to do so, perhaps it helps to greatly expand what your definitions of productivity are. i think it is beneficial to stop defining our value using default definitions, and i think it is important to question the ways that words are assigned meanings. it is productive when you are able to find true friends. it is productive when you are able to maintain friendships you have without backbiting. it is productive when you can be happy for your friend when they get a gift, allowing them to be happier for more than 5 minutes. it is productive if you are genuine with people and it is productive if you take a nap. and it is productive if you get to spend your days and evenings doing whatever it is you like to do.
what felt like a noose around my neck now feels like flowers. both ways, we blame a lack of productivity when we should really just hope for less. i kinda know what i want to do in the near future now — i’ve been working on myself for a while. i guess, for others, let your next project be you.
either way, we are better than what is the default.
