For the first time, I feel the New Year has arrived with collective apathy. Apathy for pushing ourselves, for setting meaningless targets that have no purpose other than to make ourselves feel bad about ourselves, apathy for the relentlessness of progress and how draining it can be. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a good thing. For so long, productivity has been the name of the game. It has been exhausting, incessant. It has lead to generational burnout that contributes to the cycle of disinterest and apathy all over again.
It is hard to relate to sometimes, because I am addicted to productivity. There, I’ve said it. As much as I love the listicles of “ways to make yourself feel better about NOT having resolutions” or “how to take care of yourself this January”, I gloss over them, seeing them as a self-help device for someone that isn’t me. I am addicted to productivity, and I am unwilling to break the cycle, craving one more completed to do list, one more thing I got done in the day.
I have learnt myself well enough to know that giving it up, the obsession with achievement, is not going to work. I cannot sink into nothingness, into quiet quitting or however else we choose to define “letting go”. It is not who I am, whether or not I want to be. I am a bundle of energy, raw and firing. I am accelerating, and I never learnt nto stop.
But what I can do is try. Try to balance both, as frail as they may be: a gentle push forward, onward and ahead. And more challengingly, sitting still, with the discomfort of that, letting myself free of the relentlessness of the treadmill. Balance is difficult at the best of times, but I hope this New Year I can bring some intention. Intention to try, and be forgiving if I fail. Intention in what goes onto the neverending list, recognition of what truly matters. Intention in what I choose to let go. And at the end of the day, what does it matter? Im only trying.
