Balance

So, it finally happened.

The warning signs had been building for a while, so it’s not like it came as a huge surprise. Being the person I am, I had even planned ahead and scheduled some time off at the end of the month to recuperate, foolishly believing that by promising a break in the not-too-distant future I could convince my body to keep up the pace until that point. My body, knowing full well the validity such promises hold, responded with two words not appropriate for me to put on the RCM front page. Wednesday was the warning shot- I got sick and dizzy trying to get ready for work and ended up staying home, curled up in my favorite chair with a hot cup of lemon tea. Wednesday was spent alternating between reading Erik Larson’s latest book (Dead Wake, about the sinking of the Lusitania) and dreaming about building subterranean forts in wartime England. In short, I got nothing productive done whatsoever, but it helped enough for me to just barely get through a very packed Thursday. By the time I left my day job Thursday evening, I was exhausted. Aside from Killer calling me on the way home to say our staff meeting was cancelled, I have no recollection of anything that happened that night. What I do remember is waking up the following morning feeling like I’d been hit by a cement mixer, compounded by the realization that my three-day weekend was now going to be four and would not be nearly as fun or productive as originally planned.

Too often as adults, we have a tendency to focus so intently on our work that we forget the key to sustainable success is taking a step back every so often to rest and play. It rarely seems like much at the time – give up a weekend here or there to get a project done, or hold off on reading a book in order to cross off another of the never-ending tasks that go along with building your own studio. “I just don’t have time” is such a common refrain that it should be the motto of adulthood. I’ve discussed in previous columns the amount of work that goes into building a podcast. Now add to that the time and stress of your day job – I happen to really enjoy my day job, but it does take a mental toll. Do you have kids? Then your task list just got exponentially longer. I don’t have kids, and have found that in the minds of the rest of my family that obviously means I have free time magically horded up somewhere that I don’t want to share with anyone else.

In the short term, you can convince yourself that it’s fine, that you can make up that leisure time later “when things settle down a bit.” The problem is that things never really “settle down,” and if they do, it’s because your enterprise tanked. The odd thing is that the reason so many enterprises tank is because burn-out is a very real thing – those little pleasures of life that don’t seem as important as the task at hand often turn out to be the very things that keep us going. To be fair, a lot of other enterprises fail for the exact reverse, which brings me to my point: if you want to make it, especially in any sort of entertainment media, you’ve got to learn early on how to balance.

It isn’t easy, but it’s necessary. Numerous studies have been conducted showing the correlation between rest and increased productivity – the idea that even short periods of rest help unclutter the mind and make us more productive with the time we do have. Others show how rest helps improve learning , allowing us to make better connections. It isn’t that we can’t show why rest is important, but more about overcoming the over-worked mindset of “if you aren’t doing this then you should be doing that” mentality. It’s not helping you get more done. Beating your mind against a problem for hours solves nothing except to build frustration and cloud us from finding a creative solution. Sitting at a computer reading the same email repeatedly and not registering its meaning because your brain is fried accomplishes nothing except convincing your own body to plan a coup against you.

I wish I had a nice, tidy piece of advice to help sum all this up, but I don’t. Neither can I lie to myself or my readers with some overly-ambitious New Year’s-esque declaration of “I’m gonna spend 15 minutes a day on silent meditation and twenty minutes on yoga and visit the spa and generally be more awesome.” It’s not who I am. My idea of stress release is going outside and yanking weeds, feeling the cool dirt on my hands as I replace dandelions with daisies. Sometimes it’s kicking back with the tale of a doomed ocean liner, or a misunderstood mathematician trying to balance his science and his faith in a world that wants to accept neither. Other times it’s about dumping Lego bricks all over the living room and just having at it.

Like so many others, the path I chose sometimes allows for a nice chunk of downtime and other times means I’ll have to fight like a dragon for fifteen minutes of quiet. Sometimes I’ll succeed in my quest; others, I’ll wake up in the morning and just nope myself right back to bed. Such is life. The important thing is to be aware of that, to not ignore your own warning signs, and to keep trying.

For now, my tea is ready. I have to get back to the Lusitania.