Relaxation

17:08, 30 June 2003

I suppose it is not that difficult, but somehow I just don't understand the concept of "relaxing". This morning, a friend asked me what I do when I want to relax, and the closest thing I could think of was that when I'm too tired/hungover to do anything productive, I usually just lie on my couch and listen to the news on Swedish radio (streaming over the internet). Apparently that does not count as relaxing, since she had never met anyone that listens to the news to relax, especially not when listening to the news is also doubling as foreign language rust-proofing.

I feel I always need to be running at warp-speed from activity to activity, appointment to appointment. I need deadlines to be firm and short. I need committments to pile up on each other so that I'm racing through my day and when it all finally stops I collapse into my bed for a short burst of super-dead sleep, whereafter I begin again. I suppose that for most people such a life sounds terrible, but for some reason I am happier at that pace.

The surest way to give me an ulcer is to present me with an entire free day to do with what I will. I'm paralysed. I cannot tell you how many times I've stood in the centre of my apartment staring at the floor immobilised by freedom. All of a sudden, all the things I had on my "to-do" dissolve and I'm left with nothing. The list is always looming yet not sufficiently threatening to spur me to action.

Then I strain to hear the weak cries of what I "want" to do, but there is too much static on the line. I get stressed about doing what I supposedly want to do, only to be interrupted constantly by bursts of guilt about what I "should" be doing. Which book do I want to read? Do I even want to read?... maybe I want to write, or organise my photographs, or...? But wait, maybe I should take a walk so I get some exercise? But if I take a walk then I should arrange it so I walk to the store to get XYZ that I needed, and then swing by the dry cleaners to pick my stuff up, and then hit the cash machine... Or maybe I could just go browse around the bookstore? Or maybe I want to take a drive somewhere...but that wastes gas, so no... And on and on go the panicked party planners in my head, and there I am, frozen in indecision in the middle of my living room.

I think too much. Or rather, my world does not have enough that requires my time and energy, and so I'm like an engine with its RPM in the red zone. Actually, I feel more like an electric mixer. If you put your electric mixer in a bowl full of milk and jack it to the highest speed, what happens? The mixer will spray milk all over your kitchen and then will probably overheat and die. (One day past the warranty, too, of course.) That is what I feel like in my life right now. I need to throw some flour and some butter and some eggs and some chocolate chips in there. Give the mixer something to really sink it's teeth into, you know?

I am suffering from the dissonance that results when a mind rushing as if there's constantly no time to spare attempts to manage a leisurely life with plenty of time to spare. I feel almost as if I need to create a time crunch because my life just has too much free time in it. Is that what I'm saying? That sounds insane! Isn't everyone trying to FIND free time? Why am I trying to GET RID of it? Maybe all that hullaballoo I typed in the above paragraphs isn't what's really my problem. But then what is my problem? Why can't I just relax?

Everything I do has to be engaging. I am not the type of person who ever feels the need to "unplug." I cannot meditate because I drive myself insane. Wang told me meditation is the absence of thinking. Ha! I thought to myself. Like I've ever succeeded in turning off the churning Cuisinart in my skull. Not that I scoff at meditation. On the contrary, I admire it; I just don't think I can do it; I don't think it's how my brain works. Whenever I've tried to meditate, I just feel like it is a waste of time. I can't sit still because I get guilty that I have things I should be doing, other things I want to be doing, things I should want to be doing...

It doesn't bother me that I need my life to be the Indy 500 on a constant basis. Obviously, the current slow, lots-of-free-time thing isn't working for me. But it really does bother me that I can't fill my life with all sorts of productive activities to take up the slack. Why do I fill up the gaps with drinking and smoking? I know if I had a TV I would lay around and watch TV. Why can't I replace those pointless, destructive activities with productive, positive ones like reading a book?

That's what bothers me the most: that I can't just be content lying on a couch reading a book when my Saturday night plans fall through. The only time I can justify reading a book is when it's part of something else, like riding a train or aeroplane, or waiting in a waiting room. Why is it not an acceptable activity in itself? Why do I get so restless and guilty? I used to love to read. I used to read all the time: at the dinner table, under my desk at school, on the bus, under my covers at night... what happened? All of a sudden reading for the sake of reading has become an anxiety-ridden experience full of guilt and restlessness.

All of this is part of the same buzzing in my head: the reason Saturday and Sunday are so frightening, the reason I cannot be in my apartment, the reason I cannot sit and read a book, the reason I stand paralysed in my living room, the reason I don't do any assignments until the last minute, the reason I have constant urges to join things, start things, attend things, smoke things, drink things, gorge my days with events and activities until finally my schedule catches up with my racing, planning, coordinating, organising brain, and finally the mixer has a thicker dough to bite into and the engine's pitch falls from mosquito through housefly to the deep, labouring drone of the bumblebee and the only time I stop whirling is when give myself a final twirl in my sheets as I fall into the death-like sleep that bookends such lively days.