Exchange Working Hard for Working Soft

Here’s a familiar image in my life story: I am lying bed, cradling a bowl of microwave nachos, laptop perched on my knees, half-watching “Gilmore Girls” season two for the twelve-thousandth time, passively weeping.

Two weeks before this scene takes place, I’m all fired up with the many exciting things I have to do, and urgency is center stage. There are writing deadlines and drawing projects and there are lessons to plan for my teaching job and there is the actual teaching. (Urgent because money, because rent, because capitalism, because survival.) I’ve volunteered for some activism work, which never seems to be enough. (Urgent because injustice.) There are relationships to nurture, romantic and platonic and familial. (Urgent because love.)

Everything seems so important! Productivity is everything. I must maximize my time, get things done, work harder; surely there is some end in sight somewhere. One night I get a little less sleep than I need; one day I skip a meal to work; and before you know it something (urgent) slips through the cracks, and then something else. And then it all seems to crash to the ground.

All that maximalizing and expanding productivity inevitably culminates in a crash. It’s always the same. I have to spend a few days in bed recuperating, beating myself up, wondering why I can’t just be better at getting things done. Meanwhile, I’m in bed. I’m watching “Gilmore Girls” again. I’m not getting anything done.

I’ll add that this happens most often in winter, when the hours of daylight are not on my side. I believe that I can get the same amount of work done as I can in summer, when I can take an…