It’s been a little bit over a week since the Government Shutdown, which has put me out of daily work at the Smithsonian. When the last big shutdown hit in 2014, I had just started my job and was still adjusting to a life of structure as compared to the artist-freelance-vagabonding life I had transitioned out of. Within those three weeks I updated my portfolio, made a bunch of music, edited an iLL-Lit music video, and chilled out all in between. Five years later, I find myself in a completely different place.
From looking at my day-to-day movements, it would seem like I’m still on the clock. Even without the Smithsonian work in the picture, I’ve amassed so many side projects, chores, things in need of maintenance, and other commitments that I’m still ending each day exhausted. It definitely seems like a better alternative than just sitting around. But if a forced break can’t even force me into a break, what can? Have I institutionalized myself into a worker bee, feeling the need to put in labor even if there is no boss or pay staring me down?
Each day, I encounter my to-do list of about a dozen items, which range from small tasks like mailing off a package, to huge lifts like revamping my website (a can I’ve been kicking down the road for like a year). I look at some of these things and wonder why I even put them on my to-do list, and then wonder why I have a list in the first place. I know why. If I don’t, I’m floating in this abyss of unnamed things that literally need to get done, otherwise I’m letting myself or someone else down. But then there are all these other existential to-do’s that pile on, that are toward making me the person I want to be. Studying a new language routinely, writing daily, calling home. Things that I wish were just second nature, but instead are piled onto a list that stresses me out the more they stack. It looks a lot like the kind of box we see so many people become dependent on, to the point where when they finally get a vacation or even retire, all they can do is long for their inbox.
That’s not the life I want. But in the meantime, the tasks that pop up on my phone are the tricks, and the hit of serotonin I get when I mark it complete is my doggy treat. How do I use this shutdown as an opportunity to start climbing out of this cycle? How do I approach that without turning the process into a task of its own?