1659: Time Off

There’s still nearly a month before I start my new job. With the job search over, this means that I am now being left largely to my own devices on a daily basis, which sounds like a dream come true, doesn’t it?

It isn’t.

Much like working from home isn’t the wonderfully liberating experience you might think it would be, having a protracted amount of time to yourself with not a lot that you really “need” to do is not everything you might think it is, either. Days are long, boring and filled with vast tracts of nothingness, unless, of course, you find yourself something to occupy them with.

Most days, I’m pretty good at occupying myself. In the simplest cases, I’ll simply play some games, watch some TV or read some stuff. Others, I might go out — maybe into town, or down to the gym, or just for a wander around outside. Others still, I might do things that “need” doing, like mowing the lawn or cleaning or tidying.

But there are days — today was one of them — where nothing feels like it’s quite “right”; nothing feels like it will satisfy you. It’s days like today that often see me sitting on the sofa staring into space for surprisingly lengthy periods of time, caught between desires, wants and needs, and never quite being able to muster up the energy or motivation to pursue any of them. Doing something I know I’ll enjoy feels like a waste of time; doing something “productive” feels like it’s an insurmountable challenge.

All this, of course, is a side-effect of depressive tendencies; it’s not that I actually don’t want to do anything, it’s simply that, for whatever reason, my brain decides that it wants to be sad today, and the jumbled impulses the depressed brain fires out have a tendency to override everything else and prioritise that feeling of sadness. It’s not sadness about anything in particular, it just is; it’s just a frustratingly dark feeling from which it’s difficult to escape, particularly if you’re home alone, like I have been.

It’s for this reason that I’m genuinely looking forward to starting work again — and genuinely looking forward to the fact that, for the first time in four years, I’ll be working in a place where there are actual other living, breathing people with whom I might be able to interact on a daily basis. (Said interactions will, of course, be prone to my other big issue — that of social anxiety — but that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it.) I’m looking forward to having the change of scenery each day — the chance to drive my new car and spend some time listening to the radio, music or podcasts; the opportunity to spend several hours away from the house; the pleasant feeling of “coming home” after a hard day’s work — and of just, you know, doing something.

Tell that to my twentysomething self and he’d probably laugh in your face. But, frankly, life without work is not as fun as you might think it would be. (Well, it probably would be if you had more money than you’d ever know what to do with — though I imagine even that would get boring after a while.) Consequently, I find myself counting down the days until I become just another cog in the great machines of business — and genuinely looking forward to that day, rather than dreading it.