What the Hell is Wrong with Me part 3: I have no concept of time other than it is flying

 "I have no concept of time other than it is flying" is a lyric from Alanis Morissette's excellent Jagged Little Pill opener "All I Really Want". (Sidebar, is that a callback to Joni's "All I Want"? Anyway...) I never really acknowledged that lyric beyond my simple memorisation of every word on that album. But listening to it this year, it suddenly struck a chord with me. Of course "time is meaningless" memes are floating around most people's timelines at present, but I actually think I've felt that quite a bit in the last several years (perhaps always?). 

When there's something I don't want to do, or I have an especially long day ahead of me, I tend to want to bookend my day with stuff I deem as "fun". This means playing video games, watching a movie I've already seen, or having a drink with friends (usually online these days). This way, I'm winning back some of my time that was stolen by work or other not-fun commitments. 

Still from my music video If Only. Cred. Elissa Morton

This practice came to a head when I was working as a receptionist for a chain of physio clinics; I would either work at an extremely busy clinic where there was barely time to make a cup of tea, or at a clinic where there was almost nothing to do but stare at a screen for 9 hours. And then an hour on the train home. I was so emotionally exhausted from either keeping myself entertained or working my little butt off on stuff that didn't serve my ultimate creative goals, that I would go home and do nothing of any real value. All I did was try to "regain" that time I thought had been "taken" from me while I was at work. Once I became full time at the non-busy clinic, I started to go a bit mad.

I was irritable, sensitive, sad, I had no interest in food... the list goes on. I was dutifully nice to customers but rude to my husband when I got home. I just wanted to be alone, scrolling Instagram and rewatching Parks and Rec until I fell asleep. I was a mess. 

That mindset of "work=bad" coupled with "downtime=whatever I feel like doing" is actually a shit equation that didn't ultimately serve me. It took a short 6-week session of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to teach me that. It's actually the biggest takeaway I got from that course. Striking a balance between tasks that are necessary, routine and pleasurable is the way forward. But my problem is time. I have a bad sense of time when it comes to taking care of myself.

Let me try to explain.

When I wake up and I have an hour before I have to leave the house, I want to play video games or something else "pleasurable" before I leave. But when I come home after work, I will also play video games, this time for several hours. Playing video games or watching TV, while good for my brain in some instances, are actually detrimental to my mental health in others. If I haven't stimulated my creative brain by say writing a poem or a song, or helping a friend brainstorm for her short film, then I continue to feel creatively unfulfilled. Meanwhile, if all I do is mindlessly and quickly walk to and from the tube station, I'm not actively exercising my body in any meaningful or interesting way. 

It's nearly impossible to do all these things and cook and clean and go to work 40+ hours a week but let's pretend that's not a massive issue in our society for a moment. 

I look at my hour before work as sacred me-time. And it feels so incredibly short. I don't want to waste it by sticking in 20 minutes of exercise, right? But I had to. I had to pull myself out of the cycle of working and then putting a bandaid on my brain in the form of TV. At first it felt like I was again doing stuff I don't want to do, even though I knew it was ultimately good for me. That's because striking a balance feels like you're tipping the scales too far in one way at first. It's probably why some assholes have a hard time with feminism. But it's actually the only way I was able to start enjoying doing stuff around the house or making food or exercising. I started to remember how it felt after I did those things--the sense of accomplishment, a clearer head--and I would remind myself of that feeling whenever I thought I didn't want to do them. I also time myself doing certain things like exercising or cleaning so that I know the task doesn't take all day. Both these tactics working in tandem make a big difference.

Also, life is made up of so many different parts and they can't exist without each other. 

For a while I thought I only wanted to do stuff I was passionate about because I've got a near-debilitating fear of death. It clouds almost everything I do. It makes it really hard to enjoy a lot of things or see them as worthwhile. But now I know it's very possible that all this comes down to a dopamine dysfunction (I'm looking into this). So what if my inability to focus on things I'm not interested in has manifested in an anxiety about mortality? Psychology is fun!