In Praise of Breathing Space

I have not been very prolific on the blog front lately. In fact, I haven’t been very prolific on any front. I haven’t been writing music, or planning my long-gestating novel, or creating a new business plan, or engaging in the creative arts, or actively fighting for a political cause, or knitting more ponchos. I haven’t been working particularly hard at my ‘real’ job since the exams finished. I haven’t been upping my exercise regime to fill the vacuum afforded by this boost to my leisure time. What have I been doing instead? Not a blinking lot because, frankly, I’ve been a bit knackered.

I have been eating, sleeping, breathing. I have been looking after my body more carefully than I otherwise would by doing the things I can’t usually be bothered to do like moisturising. Who normally has time to moisturise, for goodness’ sake? And I’ve got one heck of a lot of moisturiser since it’s been the go-to Yuletide present of choice for the uninspired in my life for the last ten years or so. Oh, I have been learning about plant-based cooking - this sounds better - less scary and ascetic than veganism – and experimenting in the kitchen. I do love to cook – it relaxes me.

I have also been reading more than usual. I usually read quite a lot, but I have found time to actually finish some of the books in the eight-title book pile by my bed. This might be why I have problems sleeping – the burden of the unfinished tomes by my resting place taunting me until morning – rather a neat metaphor for all the other unfinished things in my life.

What else? I have been visiting places. Catching up with people. Trying to get out into nature at least once a day, even if it is the urbanised nature of Mina Road park and the City Farm in St Werberghs. I have been going to festivals, plays, cinema, bowling. I have been having fun – or trying to. I think this might be what ‘retirement’ is supposed to be like, or rather, what it’s fabled status purports to be in the future, like some kind of mythical ‘Sanctuary’ (see Logan’s Run – a lot of my references are from Logan’s Run, which made a disproportionately enormous impression on me as a child).

Let me turn your attention, in case you missed it, to the important phrase ‘trying to’ in discussing having fun. Have you ever experienced the phenomenon of busy-ness, fetishized it to such a degree that even the ‘fun’ things you plan with as much seriousness and vigour as anything else in your life, become almost as much of a chore as traditional ‘work’ or important appointments like the dentist? All too often I have. It’s like a little mantra in my head. It has the same volume as the one that tells me I should be doing something, like, all of the time, and that I’m lazy if I’m not. I should be having fun, goddamnit, not wasting a single second of my precious existence on this blue and green ball of rock. And it’s exhausting. Anyone else know what I mean? I think one or two of you might.

Yes, in the developed world (for want of a better term) we at least have some leisure time to fill with innumerable activities and pursuits in the name of fun.  But the pressure to have a good time, or the guilt attached to not doing something wholly 'productive', can often taint what should be pleasurable activities. And yet, doing nothing of consequence, or even just nothing at all, is so important for our wellbeing.

So I'm learning something from this extension in leisure time. Things have started to slow down for me in a good way. My anxiety symptoms are abating, and so I can only conclude that doing nothing is GOOD, and just being is EXCELLENT. We should feel no guilt from this, in spite our deeply ingrained cultural ideal of doing things equating to virtue. The very rich are idle as hell and you can bet that they feel no guilt whatsoever. So, if you can afford a little bit of breathing space, I highly recommend it for shutting out the chattery monkeys in your head. You’ll be surprised just how productive you can eventually be when you are not distracted by a million thoughts and feelings of not being quite good enough because you’ve not done any one thing particularly well. And productive in a shorter space of time too, which means you have more time to be ‘idle’, or in other words, see friends, smell the roses and do all the things that make life worth living.

I read Bertrand Russell’s essay ‘In

Bertrand Russell idly chewing his pipe

Praise of Idleness’ once. It seemed like a good idea to me. I re-read it yesterday just to make sure that I still agreed with it just as much as I had done the first time. I found myself nodding very enthusiastically indeed. It’s not just that he lets you off the hook for not multi-tasking for a million hours a day, it’s that he explains why being ‘idle’ is good for me, you, for everyone (except perhaps for the very, very rich who are already using up everyone else’s leisure time and then some) and that the very act itself is a subversive one. And who doesn’t love a bit of subversion? I know I do.