In recent months I’ve been caught up in a slew of vacation idleness including and mostly limited to a copious amount of brain rotting cable television (no offense Hallmark movie channel) and unhealthy amounts of red meat. While it definitely has its rewards (never need to think, move, or shower) it becomes an exhausting chore to remain so inactive for so long. But what seems equally if not more troubling is how easy and addicting this lifestyle can become, and how much of an active effort it is to be productive and keep mentally and physically agile. So why this hair pulling contradiction of feeling compelled to do and accomplish things and similarly feeling compelled to the couch, steak in hand? Does anyone else share this distress with me or should I start going to therapy?

This whole issue came up today when I stumbled on an old email that I sent to someone after my freshman year of college, and was relatively shocked at the general interest and curiosity that seemed to possess me, and also discouraged that the questions that were unsettling then are those that are now more complicated to me today. The email was surprising and also expected–I feel like I’ve been trying to figure out the same thing for years without much clarity or progress. Whereas in college it felt like self-indulged rumination, now it’s clear to me that it’s always been a struggle to feel as though I’m fully realizing my ambition and intent (because, after all, what is my ambition and intent?), and far too tempting to be pulled into the way easier yet much less rewarding mindlessness that accompanies TV and stuffing my face. Sometimes I wonder if it’s not my nature to be in a fixed state of always secretly wanting to go home and watch movies & TV (albeit I’d like to think at least good movies & TV but this is up for debate) no matter where I am or what I’m doing. It’s with honest effort that I understand these incongruences and try to come to some productive arrangement between the two. Maybe I’m just intimidated by the increasingly certain realization that life requires a constant level of control and purposeful determination (and thereby diligent restriction) that always by nature becomes (or just inherently is) a life in effortful strife. This is especially exaggerated by the conviction of desperately wanting creative control over my life that often precludes the traditional workspace–a workspace in which being diligent is enforced and supervised. During the disparate months at a time that I’ve had a job, my high productivity is quite frankly amazing to me and I’ve wondered to no avail how to sustain a similar work ethic of my own accord.

It never feels good to be overcome by self doubt and question not only my abilities but even more terrifyingly my motivations. Am I just lazy? Am I just disillusioned and day dream too much? Or might I actually have an uncompromising need to explore creative/self-made endeavors and am I willing to cultivate the work ethic to back it up? It’s gotta be one or the other, right? I worry that I’m never going to outgrow this teenage cliché in which I desperately try to define the meaning of life while I lay in bed eating Ho Hos for dinner. It’s the 15 year old, pizza buffet loving, teeth rotting girl in me that whines, can’t I just have my cake and eat it too?