The Anxiety Of Undisturbed Leisure

[metabolizm]

To those of you who have found yourselves with more free time than ever over the last few months: have you struggled, as I have, to figure out how best to use this time? I often become paralysed by sheer indecision, not knowing what to do with myself, or rather not being able to navigate through all the potential uses of my time. I could learn something - but there is so much to learn, where do I start? I could try to write, but I have no ideas. I'll frequently end up online, mindlessly browsing the internet, because at least that alleviates the pressure of having to come to a decision. But of course this ends up making me feel like crap.

Does anyone else relate to this experience? Have you found a way through it?

An abundance of free time should be a wonderful thing - there is so much to learn, after all - and on some level I think that if it instead it leaves you in a paralysed mess like this, it points to something deep that should not be ignored. I remember the writer Cormac McCarthy saying that he's not been bored for 50 years, and that made an impression on me, given how often I experience boredom. When you consider the richness of the world, and of experience, boredom seems almost an absurd insult to the universe.

 

[Nimey]

Loneliness causes this anxiety. One wants to fill that void by doing something meaningful or fulfilling by oneself which is a harder struggle than sharing less meaningful experiences with someone. A social enriched environment wouldn't cause that anxiety. You would be called for breakfast, going for rides on a bike with someone, shopping grocery for dinner that you cook with multiple friends. Just hang out with a good friend the whole day, joking around, shopping, eating at a restaurant, hanging out at the mall checking out bypassers. Very banal things but that day would be fulfilling. Do these same things alone and your day will leave a bitter taste. If you really want to do something on your own but keep on browsing the net it's lack of energy. High energy state, good weather but having Noone around to spend my free time with leads me to doing things where I passively interact with people, eg. go swimming, go shopping.

 

[gabys225]

That's a good point on passive interaction. I noticed that there was a huge surge in people walking around my block about maybe a month into the lockdown, when the loneliness really started hitting people I imagine.

And I noticed this because I too was walking, and wanting to see strangers, if only to wave.

 

[ecstatichamster]

I think everyone needs purpose in their life if they can find it.

 

[lampofred]

that kind of decision paralysis might be related to high PTH, bad gut bacteria, poor digestion, low blood sugar/high cortisol

 

[snacks]

To those of you who have found yourselves with more free time than ever over the last few months: have you struggled, as I have, to figure out how best to use this time? I often become paralysed by sheer indecision, not knowing what to do with myself, or rather not being able to navigate through all the potential uses of my time. I could learn something - but there is so much to learn, where do I start? I could try to write, but I have no ideas. I'll frequently end up online, mindlessly browsing the internet, because at least that alleviates the pressure of having to come to a decision. But of course this ends up making me feel like crap.

Does anyone else relate to this experience? Have you found a way through it?

An abundance of free time should be a wonderful thing - there is so much to learn, after all - and on some level I think that if it instead it leaves you in a paralysed mess like this, it points to something deep that should not be ignored. I remember the writer Cormac McCarthy saying that he's not been bored for 50 years, and that made an impression on me, given how often I experience boredom. When you consider the richness of the world, and of experience, boredom seems almost an absurd insult to the universe.

I have this tendency and was wondering where it came from. Anyways one day while meditating I had a flashback to school when I was chastised for not doing anything after I had finished something. I think there is something in early life education that makes you feel that leisure is bad if it's not simulated fun in the middle of really important stuff i.e. recess. I think the best way to start is by really and truly doing nothing for a while and seeing where your interests sort of naturally incline

 

[gately]

I remember the writer Cormac McCarthy saying that he's not been bored for 50 years, and that made an impression on me, given how often I experience boredom.

Somebody in college told me that McCarthy had an entire trailer full of books in his backyard. He'd just throw them in there when he finished one and that it was filled to the ceiling with paperbacks, because he went through almost one book a day. Well, since at that age I basically worshipped the man, I tried reading as much fiction as I could in one year, because I figured I needed to emulate the man and I needed to play-catch from a wasted youth. So I read something like 200 books that year, and I'm a pretty slow reader. I maintained somewhat of a normal social / sex life, and got through my classes. I just spent probably 4-6 hours a day, 6 days a week, reading fiction, usually in the evening.

The work I produced that year was some of my best, and I was miserable to my core, but I wasn't bored for a second of it.

Some Tibetan Buddhists will literally isolate themselves completely for multiple years in tiny living spaces on "retreat." You don't hear a lot about boredom from them. (You hear about intensity and purification and bliss and pain.) They've got 'inner work' to do.

Think about people who hike long trails alone, like the AT. I don't hear a lot of reports of them feeling bored and anxious, even when it's just them alone for days at a time and there's literally nothing to do but think thoughts and keep walking thataway.

In my experience, life isn't that boring when you have definitive, lofty goals in mind. Not to be all Viktor Frankl or Napoleon Hill here, but when you're always walking towards your destination, there isn't a lot of room for ennui. In fact, when you're walking towards a positive destination, I think the thoughts you'll automatically have will likely be supportive, albeit sometimes painfully purifying.

Or--you know--shoot for the moon, hit the roof.

 

[Based Kantian]

To those of you who have found yourselves with more free time than ever over the last few months: have you struggled, as I have, to figure out how best to use this time? I often become paralysed by sheer indecision, not knowing what to do with myself, or rather not being able to navigate through all the potential uses of my time. I could learn something - but there is so much to learn, where do I start? I could try to write, but I have no ideas. I'll frequently end up online, mindlessly browsing the internet, because at least that alleviates the pressure of having to come to a decision. But of course this ends up making me feel like crap.

Does anyone else relate to this experience? Have you found a way through it?

An abundance of free time should be a wonderful thing - there is so much to learn, after all - and on some level I think that if it instead it leaves you in a paralysed mess like this, it points to something deep that should not be ignored. I remember the writer Cormac McCarthy saying that he's not been bored for 50 years, and that made an impression on me, given how often I experience boredom. When you consider the richness of the world, and of experience, boredom seems almost an absurd insult to the universe.

Anxiety is different from boredom, but I've rarely experienced the latter without the other. What are we anxious about? Clearly we aren't worried about getting bored, since that has already happened. Here's a passage from one very "peaty" book that I love, Minima Moralia by Theodor Adorno:

The concept of boredom is bourgeois through and through. It is the complement of alienated labour, being the experience of antithetically ‘free time’, whether because this latter is intended only to restore the energy expended, or because the appropriation of alien labour weighs on it like a mortgage. Free time remains the reflex- action to a production rhythm imposed heteronomously on the subject, compulsively maintained even in the weary pauses. Consciousness of the unfreedom of existence in its entirety, suppressed by the demands of earning a living, that is, by unfreedom itself, only emerges in the intermezzo of freedom. The nostalgie du dimanche is not a longing for the working week, but for the state of being emancipated from it; Sunday fails to satisfy, not because it is a day off work, but because its own promise is felt directly as unfulfilled; like the English one, every Sunday is too little Sunday. The man for whom time stretches out painfully is one waiting in vain, disappointed at not finding tomorrow already continuing yesterday.

 

[metabolizm]

Thanks, all, for these great responses. You've given me much to chew over.

I agree that it comes down to having definitive goals. Without them, paralysis sets in.
But finding definitive goals in the first place can be the challenge, when nothing seems worthwhile, or you can't decide where to apply yourself. (This is not far off from clinical depression). Hence the term "anxiety".
Cormac McCarthy wasn't bored because writing novels was a passion that sustained him through all those years. Everything was geared towards that, that was his motivation.

 

[JudiBlueHen]

It is the struggle to re-frame your life. The impossible has happened: normal life has been stopped by government fiat for more than the 2-4 weeks that should have been sufficient to respond with certain protocols (e.g. protections for elderly and vulnerable populations) for an actual pandemic. Thus we all perceive that life as we knew it may never return to "normal". In spite of its flaws, normal life allowed us to work and plan and set out to do some things we enjoy. Now there is nothing in the future but uncertainty, and we are trying to position ourselves to preserve what is important to our lives and families. It is profoundly depressing and destabilizing.

But perhaps it is at least a benefit that many people are beginning to understand that our governments are not "for the people".

 

[Uselis]

Somebody in college told me that McCarthy had an entire trailer full of books in his backyard. He'd just throw them in there when he finished one and that it was filled to the ceiling with paperbacks, because he went through almost one book a day. Well, since at that age I basically worshipped the man, I tried reading as much fiction as I could in one year, because I figured I needed to emulate the man and I needed to play-catch from a wasted youth. So I read something like 200 books that year, and I'm a pretty slow reader. I maintained somewhat of a normal social / sex life, and got through my classes. I just spent probably 4-6 hours a day, 6 days a week, reading fiction, usually in the evening.

The work I produced that year was some of my best, and I was miserable to my core, but I wasn't bored for a second of it.

Some Tibetan Buddhists will literally isolate themselves completely for multiple years in tiny living spaces on "retreat." You don't hear a lot about boredom from them. (You hear about intensity and purification and bliss and pain.) They've got 'inner work' to do.

Think about people who hike long trails alone, like the AT. I don't hear a lot of reports of them feeling bored and anxious, even when it's just them alone for days at a time and there's literally nothing to do but think thoughts and keep walking thataway.

In my experience, life isn't that boring when you have definitive, lofty goals in mind. Not to be all Viktor Frankl or Napoleon Hill here, but when you're always walking towards your destination, there isn't a lot of room for ennui. In fact, when you're walking towards a positive destination, I think the thoughts you'll automatically have will likely be supportive, albeit sometimes painfully purifying.

Or--you know--shoot for the moon, hit the roof.

Any additional benefits from reading books? Like creativity or attention span if you can recall it?

I keep saying to myself that I'll create goal to read whole local library just for lols. Mainly to stop using web so much and substitute it for book reading.

I figure I'd have 1-5h a day for reading which is not that excessive.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

If you're reading a lot, but you're not rich, you're a fool.
Also @Nimey is very much right. It's not about purpose, it's about meaning and human interactions.
There are persons without a grandiose purpose in life, but they are socially bonded are connected, and that gives them meaning and a sense of happiness.

 

[TheBeard]

that kind of decision paralysis might be related to high PTH, bad gut bacteria, poor digestion, low blood sugar/high cortisol

Spot on

 

[snacks]

Spot on

When you guys are done reducing every question of meaning to endotoxins and cortisol what are you gonna do with your excel spreadsheet approach to life? Decision paralysis can be due to genuine uncertainty or a realistic understanding of the limitations of time just as easily as anything listed there

I'm not disagreeing with you in principle that this could be an issue, just that it isnt usually/shouldnt be an explanation of first resort

 

['peataphysique]

that kind of decision paralysis might be related to high PTH, bad gut bacteria, poor digestion, low blood sugar/high cortisol

When you guys are done reducing every question of meaning to endotoxins and cortisol what are you gonna do with your excel spreadsheet approach to life? Decision paralysis can be due to genuine uncertainty or a realistic understanding of the limitations of time just as easily as anything listed there

I'm not disagreeing with you in principle that this could be an issue, just that it isnt usually/shouldnt be an explanation of first resort

Just to add a bit to this:

There are probably the equivalents of constructive "concentric" activity and destructively stressful "eccentric" activity in the brain. For example, "rote learning" is analogous to eccentric muscle contraction, and learning by asking questions is "concentric." "No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings." Any activity that seems "programmed" probably stifles cellular energy and cellular intelligence.

When activity is meaningful, and is seen to be meeting a felt need, the catabolic and anabolic systems support and strengthen the components of the functional system that has been activated. Everything we do has an influence on the streaming renewal of the adaptive living substance.

Pharmaceutical misrepresentations regarding the estrogens rank, in terms of human consequences, with the radiation damage from fall-out from bomb tests and reactor-leaks, with industrial pollution, with degradation of the food supply--with genocide, in fact.

Advertising gets a bad name when it can't be distinguished from mass murder. At a certain point, we can't afford to waste our time making subtle distinctions between ignorance and malevolence. If we begin pointing out the lethal consequences of "stupid" or quasi-stupid commercial/governmental policies, the offenders will have the burden of proving that their actions are the result of irresponsible ignorance, rather than criminal duplicity. From the tobacco senators to the chemical/pharmaceutical/food/energy industries and their agents in the governmental agencies, those who do great harm must be held responsible.

The idea of corporate welfare, in which public funds are given in massive subsidies to rich corporations, is now generally recognized. Next, we have to increase our consciousness of corporate responsibility, and that ordinary criminal law, especially RICO, can be directly applied to corporations. It remains to be seen whether a government can be made to stop giving public funds to corporations, and instead, to begin enforcing the law against them--and against those in the agencies who participated in their crimes.

In the U.S., the death penalty is sometimes reserved for "aggravated homicide." If those who kill hundreds of thousands for the sake of billions of dollars in profits are not committing aggravated homicide, then it must be that no law written in the English language can be objectively interpreted, and the legal system is an Alice in Wonderland convenience for the corporate state.

The attempt to steer a person can make it hard for them to move, because it inactivates their own guidance system.

A physics professor would notice that writing classes have a lot in common with psychotherapy, and would dismiss the possibility that such an approach could be used in serious education.

Professors of medicine see themselves as models of the authority that their students will need to apply in dealing with patients, and the physicians trained in the authoritarian style are likely to see their patients as recipients of their medical knowledge, rather than as occasions for listening and learning something new.

Students entering these disciplines must expect to be disciplined. This means that they learn not to ask silly questions about the fundamental assumptions of their profession. Their common sense of meaning, their original guidance system, must be inactivated to keep them from asking questions such as “is that a disease or a theory?” Some patients find that their physician has little patience for their questions, but most patients don't want to ask questions, because they have been taught to respect the authorities.

 

[Based Kantian]

Any additional benefits from reading books? Like creativity or attention span if you can recall it?

I keep saying to myself that I'll create goal to read whole local library just for lols. Mainly to stop using web so much and substitute it for book reading.

I figure I'd have 1-5h a day for reading which is not that excessive.

Reading too many dumb books can make a person dumb. Local libraries tend to be full of such books. Mine has loads of cheap detective novels, young adult fiction, political pundit memoirs, "self-help" books, etc. Luckily it has some gems as well

 

[gately]

Any additional benefits from reading books? Like creativity or attention span if you can recall it?

Both of those things, for sure. I also believe empathy increases from reading fiction.

I’m going to paraphrase two pieces of advice I got when I was younger:

- Read the classics. Reading the classics will make you seem smarter for years to come, because other people will always be pretending to have done that same work, and you'll be able to see through them.

- Be a selfish reader. Don’t be afraid to skim or toss something you don’t enjoy, but when something feels like kin, pay attention. That’s the business of being a good reader: don’t waste precious time.

 

[orewashin]

Reading too many dumb books can make a person dumb. Local libraries tend to be full of such books. Mine has loads of cheap detective novels, young adult fiction, political pundit memoirs, "self-help" books, etc. Luckily it has some gems as well

Childrens' books seem dumb too, but they can be stimulating to children and unintelligent adults. Don't underestimate the stupidity of the average person. The lack of "smart" media in the mainstream reflects consumer demand.

 

[metabolizm]

Childrens' books seem dumb too, but they can be stimulating to children and unintelligent adults. Don't underestimate the stupidity of the average person. The lack of "smart" media in the mainstream reflects consumer demand.

I'm currently reading Charlotte's Web for the first time. It's been refreshing to find a children's book that is well written, charming, funny, and surprising. That came out about 70 years ago, though.

 

[metabolizm]

When you guys are done reducing every question of meaning to endotoxins and cortisol what are you gonna do with your excel spreadsheet approach to life?

Oh, man, I couldn't have put it better.