I've been fuelled by unsolicited adrenaline and filled with unwilling unhappiness for so long that this new serene frame of mind is almost disconcerting.
Finding myself feeling laid-back and relaxed this evening, I began to wonder what was wrong. Why wasn't I fidgety, trying to fit in twelve different things before bedtime? Why wasn't I cooking frantically, to get the evening meal preparation out of the way as early as possible? What was I doing, just standing and chatting to the Mrs rather than trying to use up the precious remaining minutes of the day on something more focused? Didn't I need a beer to calm my racing thoughts? Wasn't there music to be listened to, blog posts to be written, to do lists to update, bank statements to be reconciled, and... and... and...
Surely I realised that the weekend had already begun, would be short-lived and precious and was already running through my fingers like sand? Why the inaction? I felt like I'd lost something and it took me a few minutes to realise that it's a positive loss. That nervous, driven feeling, that causes me to consume my evenings like a demon to compensate for the emptiness of my days, is gone. It had become so habitual that I thought it was perfectly normal, but now I see that it was little more than the mental version of the slightly sickly buzz that follows a late evening double espresso. It might feel like energy, but it's no substitute for the real thing.
There's a big hole inside me, recently vacated, that was caused by bitterness, frustration and pain expanding beyond reason. Now I get to choose what I'm going to fill it with. Long-term it needs to be something more substantial, but for this evening Snow Patrol's new album Eyes Open is more than enough. How did I ever dismiss this band as grey and turgid? Their songs are urgent and ecstatic and Set The Fire To The Third Bar in particular - a duet with Martha Wainwright, of all people - is sublime. I'm particularly impressed by Gary Lightbody's voice, which quivers and trembles in all the right places. I'm still not sure whether mainstream music is seriously good at the moment or whether I'm just going soft, but when it sounds and feels this good, who cares?
Posted by Hg on Friday 05 May 2006 at 22:58.
Received 5 comments so far.
Yeah. Being relaxed. It's great.
I'm impressed that you got there so quickly. It took me a few weeks to wind down. And then I wound myself right back up again cos I have to wriet this damned novel.
But generally, there's a lot more leisure in my life. And it's organic, not planned.
And that's good.
When I say I'm relaxed, this is relatively speaking, of course. I'm still working and still trying to squeeze personal stuff into evenings and weekends, with all the usual hassle that entails.
I'm getting impatient now to get the notice period over and done with. Two more weeks and I'm itching to get on with stuff, even if "stuff" means doing very little for a while.
Occasionally I worry that I'm so laid back and relaxed about this. Shouldn't I be thinking "aaaaargh, no salary"? Will I end up watching daytime TV all day, frittering away my hard-earned savings, making no effort to sort out my life?
It's a possibility, but a) I think my work ethic - though a little battered and bruised at present - is sound, b) the Mrs wouldn't allow it and c) in any case, it's less of a risk to my wellbeing and future than staying in that job would have been.
And anyway, fuck it, it's nearly summer. Worrying is for the winter.
I force myself into weekends like that sometimes, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort as I'm pretty sure I'd be less tired if I wasn't "trying so hard to relax".
And I have to agree that, and it might be a "getting older" thing, I'm less fussy about where my music comes from these days. Chart, or not, if I like it I'll play it. (see previous comments about James Blunt ...?)
I'll be lazy and quote myself from elsewhere:
"One of the things I find tough to battle is entropy. All the systems we use—whether comprised of silicon or flesh—require maintenance if we hope to keep them. It's this fight with entropy, I think, that drives us all crazy, for a couple of reasons (at least):
(a) It's just a shitload of work to keep up. Whether it's your job or your passion or your family or your…whatever. It's a lot of work.
(b) If you prepare for that maintenance, that fight against the nature of degradation, you're setting yourself up for another fight: quality vs. quantity."
Point (b) relates to how we maintain an infrastructure of one sort or another to help distribute the work load, but then find ourselves needing to generate workload to support the infrastructure. That's the part of modern Western life (the only kind I know, though I don't mean to imply that the rest of the world is filled with shiny happy people holding hands) that gets me in knots at the base of my neck.
"it's nearly summer. Worrying is for the winter."
Amen to that.
But I agree with Daniel about the entropy.
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