Productivity or Avoidance?
I’ve kind of been dreading this moment, this last post of last year moment, and yes, I am aware that I missed the deadline by a little. BUT things got a bit crazy and true to the topic of this post (productivity or avoidance); I took that as a solid excuse to avoid writing it and thus failed to reach my goal of publishing a post a month.
But now that I’ve put those past due days to good use and have taken the time to journal and reflect on everything 2021 had to offer me, I feel like I am in a much better place to be writing this.
If 2021 has taught me anything, it is that we should all extend ourselves a little more grace. We should be gentle with ourselves because oftentimes, we are doing the best we can.
So what? I failed to write a blog post as often as I intended; at least I started a blog!
And what if I didn’t have a job right after graduating in May? I finally landed a full-time position right before Christmas, and it’s at a company within my field of study and remote, which is exactly what I wanted!
And sure, I wasn’t able to move to Raleigh with my best friend after college, but I’m there now and in a much better position to start paying off my student loans.
Things shape up; they always do.
This year was challenging, but it taught me a lot about myself. I learned to recognize the things I’ve been avoiding and how important it is to take the time to allow myself just to breathe. Life changed rapidly for me this year, and even though I knew most of it was coming, that didn’t mean I was any more prepared for it.
Of course I knew exactly what was coming after graduation… the real world. But I also didn’t understand what the “real world” even was, so what did I choose to do? I Ignored it. And because I refused to acknowledge the existence of that reality or set myself up in any way, job searching was challenging for me. Combine that with my vague understanding of what I not only wanted out of a career but LIFE itself, and you get one big mess.
Many of my friends left college with the next step in place; whether it was grad school, a job, or a move, they were ready, and I wasn’t. So, I spent the last few months of college avoiding what was coming, and now I’ve had to pay for it. I never anticipated how hard finding a job would be or how discouraging it would be to still be searching while everyone else seemed to have found their place in the post-grad world.
And here I was seven months later, degree in hand, at the end of my grace period and my rope still finding ways to cleverly avoid the things I knew I needed to face. Productivity, it turns out, is an excellent guise of avoidance. And it seems that I am the master of “productivity”.
I have always had this long list of things to do that is constantly growing.
- Work on van
- Start a blog
- Update portfolio
- And on and on and on
That way, I never reached the last and possibly most important task… taking time to process and check-in with myself. I took a while to accept that it was ok to give myself a break now and again. I equate stillness so closely with being idle and unproductive that I often struggle to do nothing. Especially this year, because it seemed like I started to sink every time I slowed down. So I just didn’t slow down.
Of course, constantly running at that speed is unsustainable, and I’m glad to be going into this next year with a bit more awareness of when I’m using a to-do list as an excuse to put off dealing with deeper issues.
Now, thanks to some much-needed time and space, I’ve been able to look back and reframe the year in a more positive light. After all, if not for the failures and decisions of last year, I would not be where I am today, and today, I like where I am.
2021 may have left me with more problems than solutions, but at the very least, I feel a bit more equipped to begin to approach them.
Cheers to a New and Beautiful Year.