When I was in high school, I trained competitively in Karate. One of the things my sensei always said that stuck to me was that your hard work was directly proportional to your success (non-verbatim, of course but something to that effect).
I’ve always subscribed to that idea. I would clock in more hours at training to win medals. In law school and bar review, I would make myself study a certain number of pages everyday and would not stop until I did that and more. At work, I take pride for being one of the earliest ones to arrive and the last one to leave.
I was always the hardest worker I know.
A part of me thinks that I’m like that to overcompensate because I’m just not that smart as a kumite player, a law student, or a lawyer. And that’s completely fine with me. My hard work more than makes up for it. I’m a success in my own right.
But being a hard worker and this notion that hard work is directly proportional to success aren’t helping me during this time. I’m stuck in quarantine and there is sooo much going on. There’s there’s very little I know I can do but I feel compelled to be productive somehow.
While I spend my weekdays working from home, it’s not helping that I work in a government agency with a mandate to help fight the effects of this quarantine. I want to do sooooo much but I can’t. Not because I’m working from home or social distancing, but because there simply is NOTHING you can do. I mean, I can’t kill the virus that will put an end to this quarantine.
Other than work, I try to be productive in other ways. I am taking 3 online courses (Foundations of Central Banking Law, Public Policy in the 21st Century, and Screenwriting), I cook, wash the dishes, tidy up, and sweep the floor all the time. If not that, I’m reading COVID-19 related articles on how other countries are addressing or not addressing it, their best practices, and all that.
It’s the weekend now and I spent all morning donating, looking for donations drives, and telling people about said donation drives. In fact, I’ve been trying to stop myself from taking my online classes or getting a head start on work next week because hey, I shouldn’t JUST be working all the time. I shouldn’t let my days meld into each other. Weekends should be sacred.
But I can’t find bring myself to do anything unproductive. I can’t just watch watch Netflix all day. I am unable to “take it easy,” even if I’ve been saying that to everybody else during this pandemic. I feel that if I do, then I won’t succeed; that if I slack off, I will fail.
Of course, it’s just my head. The fight against COVID-19 won’t fail because I can’t take it easy. That’s not how it works. I KNOW that. Even if my mind doesn’t also seem to.
Five Foot Ninja 