Sometimes I’ll be sitting in my office at home, staring at the clock while it’s past midnight, and an itch will come over me as I grow increasingly concerned that I have all this work to finish.
Which, I guess I kinda do have on my plate…
But at the same time…
…do I really need to cram an extra hour of work at 12am?
On Saturday?
So I pull up my workspace, Gmail, my calendar, Google news, Twitter, and a Chrome tab with low-fi Zelda music in the background for added concentration. Suited for work, my mind starts spinning.
“What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?”
It’s not so much an issue of priorities or productivity, but a problem with anxiety.
A perpetual anxiety that I’m not doing enough. Not learning enough about the world. Not posting enough content. Not commenting and responding to enough comments. Not answering enough questions in my DMs. Not tending to my writing projects. Not brainstorming new ideas for my clients or business ideas for the agency. Not reading enough articles or watching enough documentaries.
There’s so much to do and explore on the internet, and sometimes I crash and burn just thinking of where to land my mental ship. I lose my train of thought, my mind, my words, my sense of direction, or my confidence.
It gets bad when I start to feel unproductive — aka, the psychological souvenir I receive on the guilt-trips I go on every time I start to gaslight my own experiences and accomplishments.
“I gotta finish something! I need that sweet satisfaction of marginal accomplishment!! I NEED TO CHECK SOMETHING OFF MY TO-DO LIST!!”
I’m always working on myself. Always feeling like I could improve myself, in some way.
And perhaps that’s the real problem.
Maybe the problem isn’t my sporadic 12am solutions, but the diagnosis I’ve given myself that I’m broken and in need of constant maintenance.
