“Hello, how are you?”
“Busy! Busy, busy, busy. I don’t even have
time to go to the loo. I’d hate not to be busy though, wouldn’t you?”
Erm, well, no
actually. I’d love it. Love it more than the invention of a calorie-free Cadbury’s
Crème egg, or being a contestant on a Supermarket
Sweep in Waitrose. You know this is clearly a big deal - I love Waitrose. Busyness
may be the new moral virtue, but I’d in fact much rather work about six and a
half hours a day and spend the rest of the time staring out the window, going
for a walk, working my way through my unread bookshelves, and drinking bottomless
pots of tea with my mates. Who wouldn’t? Fact is, we can’t. For a start that
would be ‘lazy’ and being lazy is BAD. And then of course, we need to earn money so that we can buy stuff and do
stuff, and then when all that stuff has worn us down so we can just about update our FB status with the
word ‘Ugh’, we can then maybe afford a few days holiday during which we can try
to forget all that stuff for a while.
I’ve never really
had time to think about it before, but isn't this just totally bonkers? Surely the meaning
of life isn't diarising yourself in to exhaustion? I thought all this technology was supposed to make our lives easier. But I guess that’s exactly it; computers can do it all for us, which means we are no longer
valued for our skills, but in fact paid for our proficiency at multi-tasking an
unending barrage of stuff. Oh, and on
top of that, most of us have a sneaking suspicion that what we do makes
absolutely no meaningful difference whatsoever, and we therefore cram the scrap
of life we have leftover with as much as possible so we have no time to think about how stupid it all is. Basically, if you’re not so stressed you put the cat in
the cot and the baby out the cat flap, you’re not trying hard enough.
LAZY IS GOOD
But I now know that
this is not only crazy stressful, but that being lazy is actually good for you.
I don’t mean the stuff your face with leftover kebab while watching Jeremy Kyle
lazy. I mean allowing lazy to become an acceptable part of everyday, and not a
dirty word. Because we need it. I’m not making this up just because I want an excuse to finish Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookshop which I
started a month a go and am not even half way through despite being desperate
to know what it’s all about. There are actual scientific facts here that tell
us that all this doing and never being is wrong. I mean catastrophically wrong –
unless you want to be an anxious, psychologically imbalanced, heart attack
prone, intolerant maniac, with a toxic soup of stress hormones bubbling away inside
of you. Personally, I have
enough of those in my life already. So this is how I propose to introduce a bit
more calm and contemplation to my everyday life:
Daydream more Some would say this isn’t possible, but
there is a difference between an overactive imagination and a lovely daydream.
It’s also the only way I’m going to figure out the novel I’m writing so I’m
going to allow myself at least 10 minutes daydreaming a day. Daydreaming is also
supposed to dampen down cortisol and enhance your problem-solving skills, so
I’ll have a bit of that too thank you.
Whistle Tom Hodgkinson of The Idler Academy suggested taking up the
ukulele to strum your stresses away. Musical instruments cost money though even teeny tiny ones, so I think whistling is the next best thing. I mean, have
you ever heard of an unhappy whistler? I rest my case.
Buy less I have this terrible habit of whenever I feel stressed or
unhappy I buy things. It could be anything from a small box of coloured mini
bulldog clips (yesterday), to a cashmere granddad top from Hush (which I’ll
inevitably return and therefore have to pay £8 in p&p for the pleasure).
I’m going to stop that. Because spending money, involves having to work stupid
hours and not getting to see the people you love.
Go for more walks… I do walk quite a lot as it happens, but
usually just to the shops which only serves me to feel a little more miserable
and stressed because of all the things I’ve bought/ decide I need but can’t
afford. But walking is so good for the soul. If you have an obliging companion it's also particularly good for talking about some pretty natty
issue (like in the car where it’s easier to say stuff you’d never dream of
saying otherwise, because eye contact is not possible). It also means I
should probably get a dog. Which leads me to…
Get a pet… Because I can't remember being happier than when i used to lay on the floor with my dog Bessie and rub her silky ears over my mouth. Gross isn't it. But true. So my pet
of choice would be a dog. But I guess you could get a cat instead, or a house
rabbit (although I’ve heard some pretty disturbing ejaculation stories). Just
don’t get anything that lives in a cage because if you’re anything like me
you’ll feel sorry for it, let it wander freely around the house, and then you
will have a hamster stuck somewhere behind the living room wall chewing up the
electrics.
Read proper books… I know every woman’s magazine says this
(I’ve probably written it a million times myself, sorry), but I need to stop
using technology every waking moment. When I started relaying this advice in
just about every health piece I wrote about three years ago, it made me aware
of the fact that when I spend all day plugged in, I feel this little
walnut-sized ball of anxiety in my chest. So switch off. Read a book. Write
stuff with a proper pen and paper.
Have a snooze on the settee. Sew (since that's what everyone's doing these days).
Just don’t look at a screen every waking moment.
I think that's enough to be getting along with. Although if you have any top calming ideas i'd love to hear them.
x
