What If Leisure Was a Worthy Goal by Itself?

What do you do when there’s infinitely more things to be done than time to do any of them? I haven’t been historically great at navigating situations like this. Growing up I was used to scoring 100% on every assignment, any less was a sign that I failed and should do better next time.

We’re in the countryside now, trying to get our RV ready for the next epic trip. There’s enough stuff to do in the RV to keep me occupied for an entire week. The house and the garden could be someone’s full time job for a lifetime, I have yet another overdue article for the kids’ magazine, and then there’s also my daughter, unable to go to her daycare due to some lingering cold. How do I decide which of all the possible things that scream for my attention should currently take priority? How can I ever take a break, knowing there’s so much left to do?

Chasing perfection at a well-defined, bounded job might be frustrating and consuming but relatively doable. With more open-ended tasks you’re setting yourself up for failure from the start. I’ve come to accept that our apartment will always be a work in progress, but it’s already in an infinitely better shape than a country house like this one can be, especially one that has no permanent residents and serves as a long-term storage for all kinds of random stuff.

In theory I know that I can’t expect my usual standards of cleanliness for as long as we’re staying here. And yet I still feel that all of my efforts are very inadequate. I get frustrated with my daughter when she wants to watch cartoons while sitting in my lap (if she really has to watch them, couldn’t she at least let me do something else?), and I get frustrated with her when she wants to help me clean, slowing me down tenfold and getting yet another change of clothes completely wet in no time. I dream of some outdoor yoga or playing guitar under a tree, but I’m afraid that I will never find time to do this, given all the other things I must do.

I’ve written here before that I tend to give up on taking care of myself before I abandon any of my real or perceived duties. This isn’t always the case, even when I had a regular job I sometimes took a morning off to get a massage, meet a friend or go to a yoga class. But the explanation at the back of my mind was always “I am taking this break now so that I can recharge and be more productive in the afternoon. It will make me function better and help me accomplish even more in the long run”.

Oddly enough, this almost never worked the way I expected. Neglecting sleep or moving my body for too long is always a bad idea, and whenever I accumulate debt of this kind it backfires sooner or later. But there’s no way I can physically take half of my day off, then get a full day of work accomplished in the remaining time. Every time I did something recharging I somehow expected it would grant me some superhuman skills in return, and every time it didn’t happen I ended up disappointed.

Now that I know the work I want to do will never be fully done, and that I’ll never feel fully accomplished at the end of the day, I came up with the revolutionary idea that maybe it’s okay to only get a half day’s worth of work done even if I could in theory push myself further. Maybe it’s okay to sit with my guitar and sing, or to lie down in fresh grass, not in order to have more energy and be more productive later, but just because it feels good.

I’m a bit uncomfortable typing out these words, my inner critic whispers that this is pure laziness, hedonism, and lack of ambition speaking. Maybe that’s a sign it’s time to shut down my computer and lie down in that grass before my daughter wakes up.