On keeping busy
Twiddling my thumbs and watching paint dry
Today as I write I feel really unwell. I think it’s a cold. But I’m finding it hard to tell if I’m actually poorly or if I’m simply just rundown. I guess it’s a bit of both. My whole face hurts and has been randomly contorting in discomfort all day. It’s right there behind my eyes and my nose, making its presence known. Usually, when you’re sick it’s the body calling you to rest. I feel like all I’ve been doing is nothing. To do even less of what I’m doing now makes me want to scream and make a Mary-shaped hole in my wall as I run straight through it due to sheer boredom.
Maybe I’m not giving myself enough credit. I’ve dived head first into the job hunt, spending hours searching and applying, and actually securing 3 interviews. It’s all pretty draining. I think the biggest problem is that it’s hard to feel accomplished without a sense of structure. Opening your laptop at 9 and slamming it shut again swiftly after 5 means is symbolic. Another day well spent as a little cog in a big old capitalist machine, hurrah. I joke but there is a sense of achievement to it. Not to get all Blur, but [slamming my laptop shut after a hard day at work] gives me a sense of enormous well-being, and then I'm happy for the rest of the day... My free time has been earned and I feel more deserving of it.
I’m not gloating. I acknowledge so many people would love the opportunity to be getting paid and not be expected to do any work for a couple of months. Who fucking wouldn’t, right? It’s a privilege, I’ll give you that. For me, I think it’ll always draw parallels to the time in which my mental health was the worst in my life. Getting furloughed full-time for nearly 3 months in the spring and summer of 2020 left me feeling worthless, purposeless and hopeless. The similarities scare me. I know we’re not in a worldwide lockdown or fearing the end of the world in a pandemic. That’s different, sure, and definitely a good piece of context to remember why things felt so disastrous for me back during that time. What is for certain either way is that my mind needs to stay occupied.
Not to be all ‘everything happens for a reason’, as some things in life are utterly senseless, but I am trying hard to frame things positively. I do believe you can create your own luck or become the maker of your own misfortune. At least for right now, I have no need to stress. The extra time is also something I thought I could only dream of when it comes to writing. I want to write a book. I’ve been saying it over and over for I don’t know how long. It’s still true. I have 13,000 words in a Google Doc that’s been left relatively untouched for a few months. I’ve hit a wall of fear I haven’t yet been able to push through and maybe this is when it happens. Now. Well maybe not right now as I need another Lemsip and a nap.
I’ll round things off with a little poem I wrote in the summer of 2019. It came to me as I sat on a bench in the park eating my lunch. It was towards the end of summer and I’d recently started a new job. When I say it’s something I wrote, I now can’t find any trace of it noted down anywhere. Luckily it’s been etched on my brain from the moment it first arrived in my mind.
Fallen leaves
Cast shadows
Between the gaps
Where my mind wanders
And where thoughts
Are laid to rest
The beauty in this Draft, Mary, is in how I see you thinking on the page. I love that. It's all there, in its raw, vulnerable, authentic form (well, the bits you want us to read, that is!)
So much of what concerns you in this piece chimes with me, too. That sense of the day needing shape to make meaning of it. The conflicted feelings about the different ways we make our living. And the mood drop when potential ill-health strikes. The worry that our ambitions won't be realised.
With you, sister. Look after yourself this week.