I hope you've all had a wonderful January, or at least not a shit one.
My goal was to spend the entire month at home, something I rarely do because of the travelling nature of my job. I adored it. I've spent quality time with the house: settling in and pottering about. Staying home to read is my favourite kind of goal because it's both achievable, and weather-agnostic. Nice day? Great weather for sitting in the sun with a book! Rainy day? Perfect day to curl up with a book. Overcast? May as well have a bath with a book!
I'm protecting my time like a fire-breathing dragon this year, so I can have the large stretches of emptiness that I do my deepest and most creative work in. Hustle culture is so 2010's. I'm a recovering stress addict who lived in near-constant panic for nearly two decades - coming out of foster care into the world alone at 16, raising children in my teens and 20s, hurtling through university and into work, starting my business, hustling for clients, running marathons, chasing the next thing, proving I was fine. Fuck all of that.
My hustle addiction wasn't just a response to my circumstances. This was clear to me when I stayed with my sister last week. The productivity/morality complex is our origin story. It's genealogical, cellular, intergenerational.
Working hard is virtuous, being idle is immoral, and suffering and discipline are marks of our character. These are DNA markers, etched in our bones, buoyant in our blood and patterned on our skin. Trying to challenge them makes us itch and squirm. Intellectually, we know it's stupid.
But pre-thought, pre-words, pre-cognition, we fear that we're never doing enough, know rest must be earned, treat easy things with suspicion and believe, above all: there is nothing worse than a lazy person with a dirty house. It's Protestant work ethic on steroids, and it's a very effective way to fuck up your life.
Productivity as morality
Good people work hard and good mothers don't rest.
That's not a belief in our family, it's a law. Until recently, this was a truism to me, up there with the sky is blue, the Earth is round, or my name is Alicia. Here's a telling vignette from my visit home last week:
Read on for thoughts on productivity and power, some radical musings on power, and a torrent on WANTING - why do we do it? Is any of it real? How can we know?
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