A Response To Phil Kaye’s “If You Get Everything Done”
“If you get everything done, you will be worthy.”
— Phil Kaye If You Get Everything Done
I am the strangest of workers — a business with doors that are always open. The chore is the menial—the pitch for a newspaper, magazine, or literary journal. That is to say nothing of the “work” which is the actual act of writing. What tends to it, what keeps the dream alive is a machine which requires constant attention.
I mourn for the freelancers who must leave bed four hours before sunrise to have a meeting with clients on the opposite side of the world. I mourn for the father whose 9–5 has become a 24/7. Perhaps most of all, I mourn for a society that is only just beginning to reckon with the detrimental effects of a total lack of work/life balance.
“If you get everything done, you will be happy.”
Through Kaye’s artful use of language, he exposes and mocks the lies we have been fed for so long. The lies that sit in the bottom of our stomachs. Keeping us stuffed and yet all the while making us feel unwell.
The lies are seductive.
“If you get everything done, you will be satisfied permanently.”
The camera cuts to a close-up shot of Kaye’s face, his lips very nearly pressing against the microphone. “If you get everything done,” he pauses, the breath and expectation of his audience fill the air, “you will be satisfied permanently.”
The audience chuckle a knowing chuckle. They collectively reflect on the times they were so close to getting everything done. They reflect on the sinking feeling of despair that washed over them when they realised that “everything” encompassed all the things they had yet to do. Their chuckles die down as they realised that permanent satisfaction is an empty promise — one they keep making to themselves.
It always begins the same way. A jolt of electricity fires from neuron to neuron. It is, in its sweet, indescribable novelty the idea for a story. Then I type, chasing after a string of words, hunting perfection with a vengeance. It is declared finished and sent into the world.
Though the act itself proved titillating and euphoric I always find myself a little empty after I have birthed a story. Each time, I am foolishly chasing an undiscovered ecstasy. Surely this time, I think, this time I will feel it. The goal — the finish line is an island being moved, “from place to place.”
Kaye jokes about the plethora of ways that society has found for us to maintain our productivity streak.
“Perhaps you’d like a standing desk, a lap around the room, jumping jacks, even, we encourage.
Sit-ups are the answered emails of the stomach.
That goes for everyone, need a break?
Feel free to switch it up. Try a different productive task.
Wash the dishes. Take out the trash.
An informative podcast.
Rejuvenation is productivity spelled backwards.
Ha ha. Jokes are invigorating.”
Yes, Mr Kaye, I agree. Jokes are invigorating. (On a slight tangent, I find washing dishes to be incredibly soothing).
Kaye unveils a thought about productivity that lives in the swampy, shadowy region of my psyche.
“If you get everything done, you will be valid.”
As a writer, this recurring thought has polluted my creativity. That perhaps if I get another story written or published and perhaps if it is better than the last then I will be valid. These kinds of thoughts, the thoughts of mine that live in the swampy, shadowy region of my psyche speak to the human need to amount to something. To be worthy.
Perhaps this is partially the fault of society, but I have crafted a sense of self-worth that is so deeply rooted in what I do and not who I am. That I am somehow the sum of my creative output.
“If you get everything done, the ocean becomes calm. The tide will never break over the seawall.
The lightning, exquisite and dangerous, never reaches the shore.
If you get everything done, you will have it, finally.
A tight canvas, a set of untouched oils, a hand not speaking a foreign tongue, the invitation for a new self-portrait in the empty hours…”
It is in the final lines that I glean hints of the writer’s magic — the ability to make me believe something even if I know it isn’t true. That perhaps the end is in sight and is indeed attainable. I long for the empty hours. I long for the opportunity to recalibrate my understanding of such notions as work and productivity and rest. There is a calmness and a beauty and an ease to be found in this alternate world where I’ve just about gotten everything done.
“Hurry,”
The poet said.
“You’re almost there.”
BIO —Shauna-Marie Henry is a British–West Indian writer and performance poet. She was born in London but is currently living in Bedford. Her work has appeared in Be Yourself, The Writing Cooperative, and on Bedford Radio. It should be noted that she drinks copious amounts of camomile tea and hopes to continue writing against all notions of being a rational human being.
