Frankly Put: The Itch Of Remaining Stagnant
There is this thing about the transition periods between the start of something new and the end of the old. It is a common thread that makes endings feel diminished and beginnings slightly rushed.
I think about the times I’ve found myself impatiently experiencing something to its finality. I found myself where the beginning feels like I didn’t take the time to naturally slip into it. It always looked like I took a plunge of faith without testing the depth and I hit the bottom of this pool. Hard.
On the other end, the short interval between the end of the old and the new creates this lack of a gratitude vacuum. You know? The space between; where you actually acknowledge things and are aware that the completion of something is in fact an accomplishment to the recognized. That gap has found greater importance with every other transition.
Here is the thing though, there is a rhythm to this thing. That gratitude gap could end up being a break to that rhythm. Albeit a positive one. It may not look like one because hey, you were in a zone. This state of mental fluidity and it’s a groove you can’t break because you are on a high of accomplishment after accomplishment.
Every piece of advice given to you to rest feels like someone is against your goals. Like they are out to cut you at the knees whilst you are on the grind, growing. It’s stressful because it’s from people you would like support from and it starts to feel like they are not seeing your vision. It is some twisted and lonely approach to reaching your goals.
It’s worse when that person is yourself. How does one resolve the internal conflict of a need to rest and the need to achieve those goals before life begins to feel like a downward spiral? How one can sit in the space between that and just be; still a struggle to see with myself.
I think I often become so enamored with the process of having something to do and goals to achieve I forget that breathing and good rest are a thing to do and a goal to reach. I would like to ask adults, when was the last time you had a good rest? A lot of us, countable. It’s a miserable reality.
That’s the thing about adulting, “It’s always something.” I’m starting to recognize that the things that were great are now a struggle. Say, looking forward a break. Think school and the way you could not wait for that mid-term or long holiday. That’s something great. Adulting looks at a break as something we take to deal with other responsibilities.
It’s been something difficult to be okay just doing nothing. Yet, that is the life goal. “I am doing all this so that one day I can just do nothing but wait for the grave,” some would say. We never learn to just do nothing though, do we?
It could be our conditioning, the pressure our parents and society put on us about making yourself useful. This soon became a mentality, as if being found doing nothing was a crime. We busied ourselves to hide the nothing we were justified in doing. We closed gaps between one thing and the next so fast I think we forgot there was to be a full stop to that subject.
We jumped from one thing to the next so frequently that it became a breeding routine for feelings of stagnation. We forgot how to rest and relax so much so we have to be reminded of a natural bodily function. When we sit in one space for too long, we feel restless.
If that feeling does not run you, you are seen to lack ambition or be lazy. Transition periods start to feel like hard starts and useless stops. That’s when you know you are finished. I think I’ve clocked my timer on just existing… 2 weeks. After which, the feeling of inferiority, uselessness, stagnation and that clock in to rev up the “what’s next?” Engine. Bearing in mind, the reset period was filled with other short stories and side quests.
I’m learning to nip this early doors, I’ve seen the other side and it doesn’t look too appealing. If not I need to find a way to intertwine rest and celebrating wins to create a rhythm of life.
I’m titling this project “Finding Ointment for the Itch of Remaining Stagnant."… to put it Frankly.
