Take a break – with or without a Kitkat

Do you ever have one of those mornings where you wake up feeling a bit groggy and lazy, and you have a stretch and look up at your ceiling, relaxing when you don’t have to rush out of bed? Your mind starts to notice things, and drifts through different thoughts, until suddenly it starts to get philosophical, and you look out your window and start pondering why the sky is blue, what it would be like to be that bird on that tree, and how it would feel to fly, and what on earth would drive someone to design a leaf blower so that a quiet morning is turned into the roar of a motor at 7:30 in the morning? Then, before you know it, you’re contemplating the meaning of life, and it’s only 9am on a Saturday morning.

I have experienced my fair share of mornings like this, where my brain embarks on a tangent so great it becomes an internal chorus of verbal diarrhoea. But what begins as a gentle current of unimportant mental jargon soon turns into a whirlpool of concerns and stresses that force me out of bed early to start addressing all the things I think up that I simply must complete that day.

Now, being motivated and having a strong work ethic are traits I am glad to have, don’t get me wrong, being able to have a get up and go gumption isn’t something I’d want to lose, but my God, it’s exhausting. Drilled into my head by some irritating woodpecker of a voice, is that I must always be productive in a number of ways every day. Every single day. That’s right: this little but cacophonic voice does not give me weekends off. Have you ever had a teacher, or a boss, or – let’s be real – a parent, that gets on and on at you for something, and once you’ve addressed the last thing they’ve said they’re already nagging at you to do the next thing, and before you know it you’re stuck in an endless cycle of tasks and things you need to do, accompanied with the ceaseless nagging that just doesn’t stop to … take … a… breath.

“Can you really blame people from consequently fighting to push harder than ever before to always be so productive?”

For this, lockdown has been both a blessing and a curse – although blessing is a strong word, living in pandemic is never quite a ‘blessing’. But the time we’ve had to be at home, with nothing to do but whatever we can find for ourselves to do, has given us all vast opportunities to really do the things we have always wanted to do, without excuse. But it’s not even about doing one thing a day, I have been pushing myself to make sure I have achieved a whole list of things, which drives me out of bed early in the morning, and keeps me up late at night.

It seems as though the period of lockdown has created a surge in feeling ‘inadequate’, enhancing the need to be doing more to make up for the lost opportunities, and even as lockdown has gradually relaxed, the routine built up through the months of being tied to the great indoors has meant this mentality carries on. It almost becomes a competition with yourself to try and achieve more with each day, to try to regain some lost control of your life during the uncertainty of a pandemic.

Can you really blame people from consequently fighting to push harder than ever before to always be so productive? Can you really blame them for making sure they have something to say in a future interview when asked the question of “so what did you do during lockdown?” Wouldn’t it be so nice if we felt we could just answer this question with “absolutely f*** all” and still be proud of ourselves for getting through the whole thing. Because of the constant competition in society, we just can’t ever feel this satisfied with doing any less than pushing to put 100% effort into everything, every day.

I suppose the point is, as a society, we never get to give ourselves breathing space from the constant pressure of competing to be the best and to be the most successful we can be. We are our own nagging parent, breathing down our own necks, except rather than “tidy your room”, “why are you getting up so late?”, “do you not have any work you need to be doing?”, the voice in our head focuses on the “aren’t you going to something with your day rather than relax like a fat ass?” question. It’s as though that’s all that little voice can say. It’s like lift music or the music you hear when on hold on the phone, twinkling away, making you think it’s just pleasant background noise and you won’t even notice it, but then 2 minutes later, it’s stuck in your head and it’s all you can hear, pounding at your eardrums, and it is the most annoying sound you think you have ever heard, and you slowly feel like you’re losing your patience and sanity simultaneously. It is as tiring as reading back that last sentence without a breath of air.

The point of this is that, we all seem to need to be reminded that having a lazy day, and not always doing 100%, is okay, and necessary. We all need to take a break, the KitKat on the side is optional of course, and be more accepting of ourselves, and be satisfied with our achievements.

We just need to change that voice in heads to be Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy, reminding us every day that we liked “just the way we are”.

Jasmine Laws

Featured image courtesy of duncan c on Flickr.