Crushing It

I'm on vacation, like I am every year at this time. The company gives me four weeks off, so I used to use two of them in a row to make sure I was around during the holidays while the boys were off a) to save on the expense and inconvenience of arranging child care and b) because I fucking could. Normally in my job it takes 15 years to earn four weeks off, which I would have hit in 2022, but it turns out if you luck into the right promotion because the right thing opens at exactly the right time, you can get four weeks off because it comes with the rank/title just four years in. I'm not sure if it counts as a "life hack," to be enthusiastically good at something in an office setting that everyone else around you kind of hates, so you look like the only/best candidate to jump two levels into management, but I guess I won't know until I write the very impractical self-help book around the experience and see how spectacularly it fails.

This is the last blog post of the year, so the idea was not to work too hard. Last week I actually talked about politics, which is less prominent on the blog in the last few years, but then the premise (that Nikki Haley was entering into the harsher scrutiny of being a national name) immediately became a whole news cycle this week. Either that means I'm some kind of prescient political genius or half a step behind the conventional wisdom that literally everyone saw coming. The only thing I can say for sure is that in the Trump era, the "will she survive not mentioning slavery when talking about the Civil War?!" headlines seem entirely disingenuous. Sure, only Trump can get away with being a totally unhinged Hitler-fluent leaking-septic-tank of a public speaker all of the time, but when it comes to Republican primary voters, I don't think "actually, it's about states' rights" can do anything but help.

The point is, I didn't want to get dragged back into all that. I've got my foot very consciously, but in a totally casual and relaxed-looking way, off the gas here. Yesterday I had to go get the oil changed in my car (this is no longer a metaphor) and I still pretty heavily resent the intrusion into my program of sloth. I'm enjoying plumbing new levels of inactivity. Instead of spending all my free time playing Baldur's Gate III, I've been committed to watching YouTube videos of other people playing Baldur's Gate III. The ultimate goal is a mode of passivity just a semitone north of clinical catatonia.

I have friends I've needed to see, so they're an obstacle, as other humans all tend to be. Plus I just got back from therapy, so that was another pants-not-optional outside activity. But I should tell you I laid this plan out for my therapist and she has endorsed it fully. Or at least that's how I read it when she framed it as a definitely-not-rhetorical question "Are you sure this is the best idea?"

100%, doc. Never been surer. Thanks for checking with me though, I've never felt more empowered. I intend to translate all that positive reinforcement and burgeoning momentum of self-worth into a muted but unmistakeable sense of satisfied triumph when I finally finish off the three-flavored tin of popcorn I got as a holiday bonus from work.

Don't let anyone ever tell you you aren't achieving by doing nothing. That's my new year's resolution: do more of not much. I've got at least 10 more days of a head start, then I'll get back to you with updates on the other side.

Happy 2024, everyone.