And my axe!
My analysis paralysis.
I’ve been keeping erratic hours. Up at ten. In bed by two. I don’t know if it’s because I enjoy the quiet of the house once everyone’s gone to bed, or if it’s because I want to watch just one more episode of whichever series I’m binging. Before my night ends on the Netflix browse page, I’m often quite active. I’ve started hobbyist woodworking and one night this week I only started taking a chisel to the pine well after midnight. Why? Why begin the task of fitting the back to a chair at one in the morning? I don’t feel particularly inspired late at night. I have before: I’ve written songs and screenplays late into the night. I’ve gotten out of bed and turned the light on to jot something down on a page before the idea left me. I know that feeling. It isn’t this. This bout of late nights activity isn’t driven by inspiration. It’s driven by fear.
Perhaps hesitation is a more exact term, but I think hesitation is a form of fear. I’d rather chisel scrap wood on the floor of my room than go to sleep. I don’t want the next day to roll around. I’ve complained enough about the challenges of unemployment in the last few journals, I won’t beat that particular dead horse. Each day of unemployment is, naturally, a challenge, but that challenge alone isn’t what’s pushed me to alter my waking hours. I’ve actually managed to address two large problems that stared me down as I stepped into the new year. I’ve got a job interview next week Tuesday, just before lunch (you can spare a thought or a prayer for me, if you like). I’d be handling the photography and social media for a small furniture company in Berlin. I’ve got faith that it’ll be the right fit. I told my grandpa about the job on the phone, and he said that he’s sure I’ll get it. It sounds just like you, he said. I’m also looking at an apartment on Sunday. My girlfriend’s flatmate’s friend’s sister is looking for a new flatmate. The house looks lovely. It’s only about a kilometre away from where I live now, but it’s a bit closer to my girlfriend. Work (if I get the job) is only a fifteen minute walk away. The room is available two weeks after my rent ends here, and I may be able to ask for a two week extension. All in all, things are moving in the right direction. Much of what I have to do, though, is wait.
That means that I’ve got very little structure to the day. No need to wake up at any particular time. No need to go to bed by eleven so that I’m rested when the alarm sounds at ten-to-seven. I make short lists of chores that I can tick off. Call the social security office. Call the bank. Go grocery shopping. I remember when chores just like them peppered my busy days this time last year—they felt almost undoable. Little things would take days to get to. Now, though, I burn through them too quickly. I become uncomfortable and fidgety. I explained my feelings to my girlfriend earlier this week. If I’m under a large amount of pressure, but there is a clear, albeit long list of tasks I can complete in order to relieve that pressure, I’m grand. The same is true of a low pressure scenario with a very short list of items to occupy my time. I can cope when it’s phone calls and paperwork all day and I can unwind on holiday, too. I find myself, however, in the strange position of being under relatively high pressure, and I feel that the list of things I can do to relieve that pressure is far too short to be effective at all.
If neither interview goes well this week, I’ll be back at square one. That’s the pressure I face. I feel like nothing I do during the day is able to affect the outcomes of those two challenges: the job and the room. Here and there I can prepare myself for the week ahead, but I don’t feel that I can meaningfully shift the pressure off of my shoulders by expending energy. I wish that I had an enormous tree to chop down. I wish that its trunk was six metres in diameter and that at the end of every day I could see that I had hacked a little more of it away. I wish all of this was tangible. I never know what to do with my day, and every decision I make feels like the wrong one. Or a poor one, at the very least. That’s what makes me hesitant. The fear that I make poor decisions every day because I lack the clarity to see what constitutes a good one. What is a good decision, when none of my actions influence the outcomes I care about? I don’t know. Better to whittle away at a hobby than to churn it all over in my head, I think. Hopefully, someday soon, I’ll have a reason to haul my bones into bed before eleven.
I wrote this journal at two in the morning. I then had to made heavy edits in the light of day because it was quite obvious that I had written it at two in the morning. If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.