I haven't posted in my blog in about 4 months. I have been writing, though, and I figured this time I could just share what I've been journaling.
This blog was always to keep me writing, to keep me "Productive", and I've realized how much I hate what that phrase does to me. This is about that.
Day 30 (2/8/20)
Saturday mornings are liars. They have no agenda, no ideology, just tricks up their sleeves. They’ll kick your legs out and spit in your hair, all before you wake up, then when 9 o’clock hits they drag the sun up into your unwilling eyes. Those unprepared for the sadistic Saturday will struggle to understand what to do with themselves, and will resort to habits of media consumption or hangover survival. Anyone looking to make the most of this treacherous time-off will undoubtedly be tempted with taking it easy, why work when your week is full of wok anyway? Can’t I just have one day where I don’t need to try? And thus, Saturday wins.
It would be fine if it just took responsibility. For some reason Saturday is viewed as this unbeatable triumph, the inevitable light at the end of ever tunnel. You get the day off and you can stay up late. The only day with a proper intro and outro, it’s impact is eclipsed only by holidays and snow storms. This is the day for teenagers, giving them room to live according to their completely fucked up circadian rhythms to wake up at 2pm and go to sleep at 3 in the morning. Turns out we’re teenagers for quite a while, even into college when we learn to love the day even more, as it gives us the opportunity to both cure a hangover and prepare the next one. At 24, I feel beholden to the habits I formed just a few years back, and now I’m living with the consequences. I need to study Saturday’s moves, learn to defend and deftly counterattack, avoid the traps and make it do my bidding. For me, journaling is the first step.
Most days I don’t get to write. I mean, I could, but I don’t get to sit by myself and write the way I like. It’s being a little picky, and I really should learn how to get over my insecurities and write on the bus or during lunch, even though I think it’s still fair to want my own time to express my thoughts properly. Most of my mornings now are dedicated to smash, either editing one of my three projects a week (Regular podcast, new road to top 100 series, 1v1 podcast) or practicing the game, usually in tandem since podcast editing is just listening to my voice and cutting out the weird breathing. Usually I find some time in there to write with the occasional journal, but lately I’ve been using that time to write the top 100 scripts. It sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not, at least not really. Maybe I am, in a way. I want to figure out how I feel at this juncture, and now that I’ve gotten my water, coffee, and blue light lamp going on a Saturday I get to really dive into it. ALSO a new kitchen table, so I don’t need to hole myself away in my room or sit on a weird chair with my laptop on my lap. Even though it’s in the name, it doesn’t feel right. It’s just too big, and I like my balls to remain active, thank you.
The trickiest part of Saturdays for me is just how open ended they feel. I like going up to Rockland on the weekends, even though there’s a car ride involved and my 2009 Toyota is on death’s door. It feels good to lower all expectations, to allow the most productive activity to be doing laundry, and to forget about how much cleaning I should do in my apartment with my time off. It also takes me from the temptation of the computer, where (in not so recent history) I’ve spend dozens of hours in mere weeks getting back into games like World of Warcraft or League of Legends. I’m truly a gaming addict, and oftentimes it just takes one taste to put me swirling back into those worlds. Saturdays create a vacuum that can easily be filled with these travesties.
Even writing, the one activity I’ve sworn to protect, the ancient and sacred act of creating language, my most practiced art form, a pragmatic wrangling with my own identity and attempt to reach to my soul, feels like a waste of time when inside of Saturday’s hug of despair. It feels like I should be cleaning or exercising, but really that’s more my fault than Saturday’s. I’ve already tamed the beast by waking up before noon, I can stop blaming it now for every inconvenience in my life.
Plus, what kind of asshole gets mad at a day off? Seriously, I should be so lucky to even get this opportunity, this type of luxurious schedule, working only 40 hours a week and allowing two days in a row to do practically anything I want. Would a farmer look at a full acre of land and say “Shit, now I have to plant and grow crops, and I even have to choose which ones?” Fuck out of here, man.
I think my problem with Saturdays is just me breaking free of the old mold, the one I created when I was 14, using it as my day to really goof off, play the games I always wanted, sleep until whenever, then sleep some more. Eat like shit and don’t go outside and fuck the government (At this stage, the government was my parents and the school system.) I remember these days vividly, but not with any sort of fondness. I’ve always hated Saturdays, I think, and really I spent them playing video games because I didn’t really know what else to do. Even when I had a game, soccer or baseball depending on the season, I dreaded waking up to play them, so it wasn’t just that I was unbooked that I was miserable. I just didn’t like what I was doing, and I liked video games. 8 hours straight of video games.
Then in college came my fraternity years. Saturdays were, as the old saying goes, for the boys. Drinking, chilling, pissing the time away as young men often do. My favorite days were spend traveling to some sort of Smash tournament, leaving behind one set of paid friends for a set of earned ones. Those are still my favorite Saturdays, unbeatable in any measure, checking all the boxes of what makes a perfect weekend. Anticipation, aspiration, friendship, excitement, opportunity, drinking, making memories, the list goes on. There’s a reason I’ve stayed with this game for so long, and part of it was finally getting a counter to the shittiness of weekends. I could feel like I spent the weekend well, improving as a player while having a great time doing it, still partying and forming lasting memories.
Now it’s not so simple. I still have those weekends available, and I slot them out into my schedule, but I can’t do it every week, even if the events were available. Also, attending tournaments isn’t my way out anymore, at least not where I’m standing. Smash still is, but not in the same ways as college. It’s a lot more practical now, I guess. I don’t know. I told you it’s not simple.
A book I read from Aubry Marcus, the CEO of onnit, filled me in on the idea of “acute stress”, something I think about from time to time and is relevant here. In the book he talks about turning the shower completely cold right before getting out, shocking your system and giving it a small dose of this stress. It flushed out endorphins or adrenaline or something else that gives us a reset, honestly I don’t know, I tried it out a lot and actually like doing it, but it’s hardly the point.
What’s valuable to me was the separation of generalized and acute stress, and how that feeds into my Saturday problem. A full day off is not an acute warning, it’s a wide-eyed, deer in headlights, overwhelming-responsibility type of anxiety. When I introduced my “Road to Top 100” series, it started to give these days a little bit of a shape, with some real specific anxiety attached to it, something actionable and firm, which shows me exactly what I can do to get out of it. This is one of those rare times where I can actually remember setting a goal for myself like this, centered around a project, aiming for self-improvement. I wanted to make my Saturdays better, and I did.
This might have taken me an hour to write, with a small poop break in the middle, but it’s not about speed here. I’ve wrangled the beast, but I can’t let go now, not unless I want it to run away. This leads me into my real problem, something that clearly took a bit of journaling to actually get to, and that I’ve clearly written about before. Becoming complacent.
Complacency and productivity seem like brother and sister to me. Complacency is the brother, lazy and fun but never leaves the couch if he doesn’t have to. Productivity is the Type-A older sister, doing her full morning routine before most sane people have their first coffee. The struggle for me is figuring out who I want to hang out with. They both seem shitty, but also kind of great. Lately, I’ve wanted to get to know the ladder. She seems like she can help me get to where I need to go.
This feels hard to write about. I’m not sure why. I’ve always had a difficult relationship with productivity, and it turns out that personifying it and capitalizing the ‘P’ didn’t make it that much easier to understand. My attempts to keep myself productive usually end up somewhat successful but ultimately confusing, and when the time comes where I inevitably fall off the horse, I turn highly introspective and try to figure out what the hell happened.
Good sign though, I don’t feel anxious. I just want to learn about this. Why do I hate that word so much?
There’s a lot of baggage to productivity. Part of it is personal, my parents both wanted me to be more “productive”, albeit in their own ways. I never knew how to process it, and the mixed messaging meant none of it really went through, but I’m starting to think that it’s a blessing that I wasn’t too influenced by it. The word became more of a ringing in my ear than a soul-binding treatise, so dealing with it feels more like getting a bird out of my kitchen than ripping my heart out of my chest.
What I’ve discovered so far is that productivity is the secondary goal, not the motivating force. It doesn’t work for me to get up and say “Time to be productive!” then get up and start clanking dishes around and mopping the walls. The sentence itself is nonsense, what does that word even mean? There is no positivity to it at all, even though it pretends to be nice and inspiring. Now it’s used more as a tool of self flagellation, “I need to be productive today” just sets us up for failure, it’s generalized stress, it bugs us out, gives us zero clarity, helps us achieve nothing. I hate the word so much.
I also try to not get too caught up on it for too long. At the end of the day, I can say “wow, productive day” as a way to reward myself, to look into the eyes of the beast and laugh, “Hah! I’ve conquered you. Today, I’ve won.” But even then, what am I really saying? That today was a win? All other days, those were bad. Tonight I can celebrate, because I finally put one up on the board. If I hadn’t, well, I would be miserable. That kinda sucks too, no? Putting that sort of pressure on yourself for the next day off? I don’t like it, either.
Productivity is just a word of judgement, either way you slice it. It’s either looking forward or looking back, it’s not a word of being present, it just can’t be. Even if you’re saying “Wow, I’m currently being very productive!” then you’re just patting yourself on the back, rather than doing that for which you are reveling. There’s no winning with this word! Do you see why it sucks? I think it sucks.
Yet, it’s everywhere, and doesn’t seem to be leaving our zeitgeist. That’s fine, what’s it to me to change it, I just don’t want to weaponize it. I hope I never say to my kid “Don’t you want to be productive?” It’s pretty much the same as saying “Don’t you know you’re going to die?” Fuck that shit.
Acute stress. Actionable goals. Those are helping me, right now. I feel it already, looking at my messy kitchen and wanting to clean it. That’s stress. Not anxiety. I found a small difference. I can get up now, I’m allowed to let this journal sit. It’s done its job. Screw you, Saturday.
