Ok, This Is Getting Out Of Hand
The amount of things we take on is just... totally unrealistic, right?
Trying to stay in-the-loop perpetually leaves me feeling exhausted and worse off.
In this age of instant information, we can’t possibly need to keep up with this many Joneses… I mean, how plugged-in are we really supposed to be?
If I may be so bold, I think this era of digitally magnified comparison has fundamentally changed our perception of what’s normal.
No, seriously—how much are we, as humans, expected to take on these days? We are vastly more aware of the life we could have than anyone, from any other time in history, has ever been. And yet, we seem so much less likely to actually pick a lane and make any meaningful moves toward the life we realize we want. If we do, we’re pressured to pivot before we ever see the payoff, anyway.
We’ve collectively become convinced that “overcomplicated” is somehow an esteemed status symbol. It’s like, once we do start going after something, our short-term memory extracts every ounce of would-be-satisfaction from it before sending us careening back into the social media soup.
I want a slow, simple, and relatively unplugged life. But that feels like I’d basically be excommunicating myself from civilization, and from any financial security, stability, or future prospects.
And it’s that kind of polarized thinking that seems like the biggest issue here.
Why must we bury the life we’re trying to build under a mountain of hardship?
The other morning, I’m spinning through all of this as I’m walking myself around the block. I’m daring it to rain on me, caught somewhere between fuming and simmering, while trying earnestly to remind myself that harsh self-talk is decidedly unhelpful.
I’m in one of those spells right now where I feel like I’m behind on most things—you know, just like… across the board in every facet of my life. Tasks and to-dos are just piling up. Collections of shoulds, coulds, and woulds are just kind of lingering there in perpetuity, after routinely getting bumped further down the list.
It’s not even like I’m egregiously behind, either. That’s the worst part, actually. Things are not going to crash because I’ve managed them well enough.
Well enough works.
But, ironically, not all that well.
Facing unrealistic expectations.
The truth is, lately I’ve been feeling like a shitty friend. It’s partly because I owe many of them a call, text, or email back... and partly because I genuinely don’t know where to get the time.
I can parse the shit that truly needs my attention, lock in, and get it done. But it’s also why I’m frustrated right now in this sea of rising tasks, because even though I’m crossing things off of my to-do list at a rather impressive clip, I still can’t keep up. And I know I never will, but I also know that I need to pare back my proverbial life-garden if I want things to flourish and bloom.
Every time I slow the pace, it means letting go of something. And that works; things stabilize. Then, inch by inch, the pace kicks up again. And I’m at a point now where I need to assess what to cut, but I also feel like things are pretty tight and I’m running a pretty bare-bones operation as-is.
So finding stuff to get rid of feels impossible.
What gets lost in the details.
My head’s whirring with the weight of all this while I’m walking down the sidewalk. This is a neighborhood of artists, in some capacity or another, and I love it here. Quite a few of these houses have porch-swings. There’s plenty with benches, book nooks, or chairs. People actually use them, too—they’re not just for show.
These porches, they’re not gaudy like they could’ve been.
You know what I mean? They have personal touches instead of catalog uniformity and they’re covered with colors you’d never find in the Massachusetts suburbs where I grew up. Purples, yellows, reds, blues colliding into one another accompanied by stained glass, wooden sculptures, and mosaic tiles. And the gardens... they overflow with life instead of getting trimmed into tame sameness.
As I’m bopping through the surrounding neighborhoods, I’m thinking about the way I go about prioritizing things in my life. I’ve tried all the methods and strict versions of productivity dogma just aren’t for me. That stuff’s never worked in the long-term unless accompanied by a constant stream of internal reprimands to make sure I’m good and anxious about it.
When it comes to getting ahead, less is more.
The “less is more” and “addition through subtraction” stuff has worked, though; with some tweaking. My neurodivergent brain does well with a narrower focus rather than recalculating the ripple-effects of too many interconnected things. Especially when I don’t get to really find my footing or chip away at any one thing without running the risk of blowing up the rest.
That goes for working, job hunting, side-projecting, admin-ing, exercising, social life-ing… all of it.
I notice I’m shaking my head and I’m hoping I don’t look too much like someone who’s talking to himself while skirting past some people on the sidewalk with their dogs. I’m listening to a podcast, like I always do when looking to think on things and search for answers. Alex Honnold’s talking about how he was never aiming to make a ton of money with climbing and that he just wanted to climb. He said that if he just focused on getting better at climbing, without trying to monetize it, he’d become the kind of person who could climb some pretty insane stuff, and that money tends to find those folks.
So now I’m thinking about what that meant letting go of, because when I was a full-time snowboard instructor, I could feel the downgrade in my riding after just two days off. It wasn’t major, but it required some loosening up and getting back into things to be able to feel the micro-responsiveness I was used to.
While I’m walking past an overgrown garden of bleeding hearts, I’m picturing the risk of putting time toward something without covering your ass. And, yet, I get why Alex said he’d be fine if the money never came because he’d still have everything that pursuing climbing gave him.
Well shit.
After a big, huge, intentional exhale, I admit that was probably one of those things I needed to hear.
Find the stuff you don’t mind doing.
When I was in college, this upperclassman in the outing club with me became a math major because he didn’t mind doing math homework.
At the time, that didn’t make sense to me. For starters, I hated math. Ironically, math has popped up a lot in my marketing career. Go figure. Beyond that, though, I couldn’t wrap my head around spending so much of my life doing something I just sort of felt “meh” about. I wanted to live and breathe the work I did, the impact it had on people, and the life it let me live.
Well, what I wish I knew then was that while I was looking for something that would tick those boxes, that upperclassman built himself a pretty robust life once his math homework was done—dinners with friends, time outside, trips, travel, events. He created a life with predictable rhythm so he could improvise around it.
Me? I feel like I had to scramble just to survive while I kept searching.
It took a long time to learn that there’s a built-in delay with stuff like that. The payoff won’t come fast, and it might not even look like it’s coming at all. And, when you keep changing the thing you give your energy to, you’re only prolonging its potential payoff.
As I’m finishing out my walk and climbing the steps to my house, I’m thinking about how social media seems like it’s just completely distorted our expectations around how in-the-loop we’re really supposed to be. I’m feeling like that extends to how much I tell myself I’m supposed to take on in life, too.
So I tell myself it’s unrealistic.
One of these days, maybe I’ll believe it.
I let out a deep sigh, still feeling like a shitty friend who’s just let himself off the hook.
A day at a time.
Later, towards the end of the work day, I’m in my kitchen shoving some food in my face before running to the bathroom and heading back to my desk to wrap up a few more things.
Some days, that’s just how it goes. I’m already thinking about the next email I’m going to tackle as I move toward the sink. I can see the soccer fields across the street through the window and I’m watching this dad play soccer with his son. I’m guessing the kid’s maybe eight or 10 years old, tops.
It’s late afternoon and they’re the only ones out there. Dad’s taking shots on goal, in what appear to be flip flops, while his son defends. They’re in no hurry. Sometimes, I even see them out there early in the mornings before school, with a couple other kids and some dogs. They never seem to be in a hurry then, either.
A minute ago, I’d been moving fast. I’d been feeling good about all I was getting done. Now, though, I’m standing in my kitchen thinking about emails and wondering how I got so distracted from moving towards a slow, simple, and relatively unplugged life.
This… this is getting out of hand.
onward.
If you enjoy reading my writing, I publish short reflections like this each day as part of my daily column, Kickturn.
Sign up to get it here.
Related to every single word