rest & alchemizing my anger around it
Article Submitted by Lauren Daeger
I am overwhelmed with my life right now.
There are so many things I want to do, both in a day, and over the entire span of my life, and I’m currently struggling with the feeling that there’s just not room for it all.
Maybe it’s not true, but when I’m feeling this way, the assumption is that it is, and it makes me fall-to-my-knees sad.
I woke up this morning on a day off of work and slept in, skipping my morning lift + walk routine. I like to get my big movement of the day in in the morning because it sets me up to feel good and leaves my evenings free for my creative pursuits like dance and writing. Today, I didn’t get my lift in at 7am, but had it in my head that I would still get it done at some point in the day.
I ended up at the gym around noon and rocked the first half of my workout before hitting a wall. It felt as if all my energy left my body. Every movement after that point was grueling and supremely angering. I groaned and grunted through the rest of it and finished things with a strong desire to physically hit something. On my way home, I texted my boyfriend that my workout had really pissed me off; he asked why, and it was then that my heart cracked open and revealed what was underneath my frustrating energy crash. I was deluged with feelings of gaping sadness.
“I feel caged and broke and like I don’t have enough time to do the things I want to do,” I responded. When I got up to our apartment, I put my ass on the kitchen floor and cried.
We talked some of my mental through (<3 him) and I realized the root of my overwhelm. Normally, my weeks are rigidly routinized because I do have a lot I like to fit in around my obligations (like having a job). AKA, movement comes in the morning so my evenings are freed up for leisure and creativity. I tick that box early because it’s a nonnegotiable for me and then I don’t have to worry about it later. When I chose to take a day and sleep in, arriving to the gym five hours later than I normally would, that threw that part of my routine off — but I didn’t adjust the literal laundry list of other things I wanted to accomplish during the day. I still wanted to shower, eat perfectly balanced meals, get my steps in outside, maybe write or post on social media, read, spend quality time with my partner, put my laundry away, go to my dance class, see some new friends afterwards, and be home before 10 so I could prioritize my sleep. AND, I wanted it to *feel* like a restful day off, because that was why I took the day off in the first place. Restful?
So for whatever myriad of physical reasons, I lost my energy midworkout, and that bubbled up some anxiety about the reality that I probably wouldn’t have the energy to do the rest of the things I wanted to do when I got home. The physical-mental/emotional mirroring there is fascinating and precious to me. I’ve learned that not everything is a signal or has to necessarily carry deeper meaning — and, I am also the creator of meaning in my life, and this parallel feels apt and true to me. When I made the association, it peacefully settled like sediment in a river, letting me know my perception was on the mark about something in my experience. Making the connection between my physical slump and my spiritual burnout feels helpful in my processing of multiple lines of emotion currently manifesting in my body at this particular time in my life.
Why is it a thing that I turn a day off into something that wears me out? Why do I also have to do the work to process through a question like that?
I’m angry. I’m angry that we ceaselessly glorify “work.” I’m angry at what counts as work and what doesn’t. I’m angry that society’s fabric and my conditioning make it so that I semiautomatically relate to even a self-imposed “day off” as a chance to catch up on things I haven’t had time or energy to get to because so much of my time feels monopolized. I’m angry that my mentality reflects semi-conscious motivators that my spirit doesn’t claim; I’m angry that these motivators feel forcefully imprinted. I’m angry that rest is so hard for me to mentally reach because of all this.
I think about the broader implications of this push-and-pull between my time and my desires. For what feels like a long time, I’ve also struggled with knowing where I want to put my energy. What if this is a designed byproduct of our modern work system, consumer culture, and hustle mentality? If we’re dedicating most of our energy in support of these systems (so that we can survive), it suddenly becomes more challenging to tune into the ways we might feel innately and uniquely compelled to participate in our own lives. Capitalism doesn’t really benefit from us smarting up and remembering we like to make origami. But today, it also takes slowing down and quieting your life a bit to even know you like and want to make origami — read, getting off social media, making yourself unavailable to the constant pressure to buy new things, and resisting comparison and “keeping up” are, in a way, prerequisites to getting to the heart of what we actually want in life. These things make us feel like we want and need everything, and yet when we engage with them, we’re left unsatisfied and wondering what we’re missing when we technically have everything. It’s unfair that we have to strip ourselves of culture we didn’t really ask for in order to access our hearts. It’s unfair that it’s so goddamn hard to turn off enough to nap, but it makes sense why it is. Discernment and rest are what will truly save us and deliver us back into the arms of ourselves.
I dream of a world where this type of work is seen and celebrated, where all people are safe and empowered to engage with themselves and their desires in this way. A world whose fabric heartily supports people trust-falling into themselves and their very important creative visions for their lives. For this world, I am a humble pioneer.
xo,
Lo ❤️🔥