If I just pushed a little harder…
My M.O. has always been slow and steady. I may get in the zone and have bouts of hyperfocus that propel me forward quickly, but overall I don’t do well when rushed. I’ve been known to dig my heels in ever harder if pushed to go faster – which means lately? I’ve dug in down to my knees. Because suddenly this became The Time to do everything without excuse or barrier (except for those still keeping the lights on and our essential systems flowing). To have hours, days, weeks, months of freedom from commitment or events without even having to make up a reason why I didn’t really want to go in the first place. It should be ideal for all my fellow introverts.
And yet.
If you’ve watched any sci-fi, you may be familiar with the plot line where the ship or crew becomes trapped but the more power they use to free it, the deeper and tighter the trap becomes – as whatever’s holding them uses all their power against them. It’s only when the engines or whatever get powered down and the crew tries to coast through that they can escape.
That’s where I’ve been – stuck, spinning my wheels. Stuck, unable to put a thought together or do much more than move from my bed to my couch to my bed. Stuck, unable to remember why any of this even mattered. The word ‘inertia’ kept popping to mind (and also a very real awareness that depression ie at play). The only way to break inertia is to get moving, so I kept pushing. And pushing. And pushing. But it felt like carving that rut deeper and deeper.
There’s an element of giving in, of surrender, of pausing that seems to be so inherently trained out of us that it’s always the last resort. A fear that if we pause, we may stop forever.
The irony is, if you’re like me, you went into business for yourself because you NEEDED those pauses. We wanted to be able to find moments in a day, week, month where we could chase a whim or a nap or a favorite flavor of ice cream. So why do we keep cramming those pauses with new trends to chase, new metrics to track, new tech to maintain? Where’s the balance between keeping ourselves moving and running ourselves in circles?
Okay, okay – how about an easier question: what’s one app/service you wouldn’t miss or metric/stat you don’t care about (even if They say you should)?