august felt like a slog. looking back i don’t remember all that much of what i did. a lot of decompression that was masked with feeling like i needed to be productive. when i took this time specifically to not be productive. to be. to rest. to reflect. to decompress.
which i think is what i did. was hard to notice as it was happening. i think i fought it a lot. so much of life is conditioned around feeling and being productive. which i don’t think is right. and is a lot of unlearning. do we need that external structure in order to actually be productive? in order to actually achieve what we want? i would hope there is an inner drive within us to push us towards what matters to us, instead of this external push rushing us towards productivity. you can see how productivity can be unproductive at the end of the day. depending on what you really want to achieve.
and in august, i wanted to be unproductive. at least in the outward sense. first month freshly unemployed. by choice, i might add. all of adult life thus far spent rushing from one opportunity to the next, without taking time to reflect and decompress.
coming off of employment to end july, i was ready to jump headfirst into adventures and goals and growth. what hit me after the dust settled was fatigue and fog when i expected energy and clarity. that was tough and made me feel inadequate and very much so a caricature of the unemployed. it also made me realize how much i was driving a square peg into a round hole when i was working. i desperately needed an exhale.
august felt like a drag at times. back to back to back heatwaves with no AC really made it quite frustrating to try and do things i wanted to do. harder to trail run. harder to sit behind my computer. harder to sew. it was frustrating. but probably good.
i spent a lot of time and got a lot of satisfaction from building things with my hands. big or small. creating something tangible and physical provided a dopamine hit that i’d been missing. lots of bread, lots of upcycling, some knitting. converted quite a few old bike shorts into new yoga shorts with lower waists & more flattering inseams. did some band tee to tanks conversions. experimented with new bread types. these pillars in the day to day gave me something to look forward to, and it was impossible to feel like a waste of time when you have something to hold for it in the end. maybe i was battling feelings of inadequacy and restlessness with tangible outputs of my direct effort that i couldn’t argue were a waste.
i was getting frustrated due to the brain fog settling in my head. i hurriedly described it as my brain getting out of shape without work, floating up to the clouds. i really think it was more of a cleaning. i was dull in august which allowed me to be sharp in september. as the clouds parted, which took really getting out of my everyday setting, my ideas and thoughts were a lot more crystal clear than when i went into this brainfog of august.
looking back on august, i know it was not a slump. that was needed time. it afforded me the rest that i needed in order to feel ready and energized about the next step. without the indifference of burnout.
ended the month in michigan. ramping up for loads of travel in september. feeling bits of dread and anxiety that hang over me ahead of an extended trip. even though it’s exactly what i want to be doing, and i know will make me feel the most alive, i can’t shake that pre-travel dread of leaving my routine, my home, my comfort. it’s always worth it. and i always know that. but those feelings still hit.
