Ok, it’s technically Day 3 (and if you want to be really technical, it’s Day 4 as my qunemployed life began Monday). But I feel that part of this project should be dedicated to unsubscribing – detaching – from the usual pressure I put on myself to achieve perfection in every move I make. More on this at a later time I’m sure.
Anyway…
Having worked under the excruciating pressures and exorbitantly fast pace of the marketing industry throughout the past 14 years, I really thought I’d find myself bored or even depressed at the start of this weird time. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
The thing is that for a while now, I’ve haven’t felt that my mind has actually been me. The last decade has seen leaps in the advancements of smartphone technology, and society has reactively followed suit. Now-a-days in digital marketing we create every experience “mobile first,” which assumes that our users will be engaging with most of our content using a smartphone. We as consumers – or at least I – prove this true. They – we – me – always have our phones with us often bringing it to bed, or even to the bathroom for goodness sake! We “need” it by our side whether to entertain us or (in my case) simply to ensure that we don’t miss an email… phone call… social post… sport score… the time… a text… you name it. And thus, throughout the past 10 years we have become always on.
Always on. Let that sink in.
As if being ‘always on’ in your personal life wasn’t enough, employers often reimburse your data plan, or in my case simply hand you a second phone to carry around. Whether they intend so or not, this becomes yet another portal to staying connected to yet another community at every single moment of every single day.
A few weeks ago, I was a girl commuting 90 minutes to work, dragging along my two mobile phones to ensure that I met all of the expectations of my personal and professional lives by staying on top of everything. When the pandemic hit, I became a girl who was telecommuting and thus surrounded by her two phones, computer and iPad all day long. While I’m a fan of remote work, I’ve found the underlying always on mentality of it all – remote or in-person – to be a bit much.
Perhaps it’s undiagnosed insanity but with the rise of the always on society, I’ve experienced a significant uptick in an always on mind. The mind that used to rest… that used to focus… that used to be able to sit and write and finish something in one shot… is now so damn busy dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s of my inbox – or more accurately, ensuring that I do. It simply doesn’t have time for the nonsense we call focus, let alone rest. My body, along with my consciousness, try to trick it every night by going to sleep. We wake up in the morning “feeling rested” but the joke is always on us, because – disguised as dreaming – my mind finds a way to stay busy overnight. Although undoubtedly helpful in many ways, the same has been my experience with meditation.
Since Monday, in parallel with the decline – or really the abrupt stop – in the influx of my work-related emails, alerts, and all work-related responsibility, it comes as no surprise that my mind has seemed to follow suit. Further, given the current pause on my social life and pretty much all personal responsibilities outside of my home – I think I’ve hit the realization of just how exhausted I truly was.
My mind is still trying to trick me into doing things – for example starting this blog, always on cooking, organizing my new home – there truly is no rest for the weary, LOL. But it seems to no longer be managing my penmanship. Now I’m in charge of that. And I’m intrigued to see where this shift in roles and responsibilities takes me.