This morning when I woke up, I opened my eyes and I just lay there for three hours. I can feel shame in my body when I say that out loud. I feel like I need to talk about how hard I’ve worked all week to justify it. (which is what I just did) From 9 till 12 this morning I just looked around my bedroom, up at the little bit of window I can see from there and tried not to think too much. I’m ashamed to admit that too – I wasn’t even thinking- nope, nothing, nothing that can be construed as ‘creative’, or ‘productive’ in any way. I wasn’t coming up with ideas, or mulling over current projects. I was just laying there.

I think we are tormented by anxiousness so deeply ingrained that we hardly even notice it is there. It is as absolute as water is to fish. To be alive is to feel anxious. We feed each other in the subtext of our everyday conversations “how are you?” “oh, busy, busy…” to be busy is admirable. Heroic even. We play this strange game where we say “oh, I’m really busy” with raised eyebrows and a slight lamenting nod, like we’d like it to be another way, but ultimately, we understand this busyness is for the best, and we are lucky to be busy. If we weren’t busy working, we might be relegated to the realm of the “un- busy” i.e, the lazy, the no hopers, those lagging behind, those of us who are not one of “Britain’s strivers!” We imagine people who are not busy, not ‘working hard’ to be going nowhere, dull and stagnant, uninspired, uninspiring, uncreative. Which camp do you want to be in? Then you better get fucking busy, you’d better keep working all the time. And you better look like you’re really enjoying it too. Don’t let your guard down. Nobody likesnegative people. Be really nice. Swallow it down, smile, be enthusiastic. Keep working, what’s next? What have you got? Hurry! You better show us something, people lose interest quick, and someone else is more than ready to snap up your place. There is an Internet full of people grappling for ‘progress’ everyone is friends and everyone is a competitor, stop whining. Get to work.

When I started writing this it was just something I was trying to get out, or get closer to. Scratching a psychological itch, but as I was writing I thought, “I’m going to stick this up as a blog” and right on the back of that thought came another thought, a kind of unspecified inhibiting fear, behind which is the idea “be careful… this could damage your working relationships”. Nothing is more important than our careers, we are taught this at school and we live it out every day, think of the future; get ahead. Those of us in the creative industries utilize the Internet and social media so that we, as individuals become our own brand, every tweet, blog, vine, thought and interaction feed the bigger publicity campaign of growing awareness and garnering attention. We tend our profiles, nourishing them with posts and interactions, nurturing the fruit of our own celebrity. This is the online equivalent of a drunken outburst at a net working event. Welcome online, to the Internetworking event. What is wrong with that? What do I want instead? I don’t know. But at least I don’t want to have to pretend I don’t see it happening, to gleefully play along.

What are my options?

a. Give up all my possessions and relationships and go

live in the forest.

b. Try to exist within this game without losing my soul.

Even in may, Its too fucking cold for option a, and option b is what everyone is trying to do. I want to be part of something meaningful and worthwhile. I want to dedicate my life to something I can be proud of, I want to create something true and beautiful, and I want to do it slowly and thoroughly, with time to think and breathe and eat eggs in the morning while looking at the sea and knowing I am alive and I am not busy or anxious. And maybe there is the hook. Maybe that’s what we’re all trying to do. We escape the mundane working world, take sanctuary in art and creativity, but commerce and competition leaks back in and infects us, turning creativity into productivity, our sanctuaries into factories. Am I reading this all wrong? Is it just me who is infected with this feeling? Is everyone else enjoying it? Or do they just accept this is how it is? Join in with the game for now, the way of life and work you dream of exists if you work hard to get to the top, honest, get busy.