One of the hardest things I still have to learn is how to be unproductive.

Screenshot from Animal Crossing: New Horizons as captured in tweet from @_baomii

I like to think of myself as “productive girl extraordinaire.” Like that makes me some sort of superhero. I think I’d like a cape (I have a cosplay I do with one and it’s sooooo comfy). At the end of the day, when I’m feeling down, I run through my day and tally up my accomplishments. I read this many books (or pages, at least). I wrote this many words. I cleaned this and that and…

When I relay this to others, sometimes, I’m just met with wide eyes and the question, “How?” Not going to lie, I sort of live for that. I love that I shrug and just say, “I don’t even know.” To a certain extent, I don’t. To a certain extent, I do.

It’s because I don’t know how to be unproductive.

To be perfectly honest, I blame my schooling for this. I think a lot of us can. At one point in high school, I remember I was taking 3 AP classes, in a musical at a community theater, house manager for my high school’s play, in show choir right in the middle of show choir season, trying to fit in volunteering, and applying for college. I became an expert at working on homework from classes early in the day during classes I sat in late in the day. I remember crying over AP Physics homework in the dressing room during the musical’s dress rehearsal while six-year-olds got into trouble nearby. I was lucky to get more than 6 hours of sleep a night and most of that was spent on the couch where I passed out studying.

I came to think that this was what life was supposed to look like. Between school, stacks on stacks of homework, and extracurriculars, I only had time to spare for sleeping and eating, and sometimes not even that. I didn’t have free time. I watched TV while completing my homework because that was the only time available. I worked on writing during study hall on the rare occasion that homework was light that day.

College was a little like that too, though add in a job on top of that. Any free time I had then was spent with friends or doing club activities. Even when I was too tired. Which was always. It got to the point that one weekend my senior year, my body just shut down at the prospect of spending time volunteering with my friends, forcing me to spend the weekend in bed. And I felt unbelievably guilty. I was missing out on experiences. I would fail to have the right social media posts and be left out of inside jokes. I was the poster child of FOMO before I realized that was even a thing.

Getting out of school and into the quote-unquote “real world” was WILD. Because suddenly, I had gaps of unscheduled time. What is this thing? No one taught me how to deal with an hour! Where were the math problems? The three page essay? What, I’m just supposed to fill this with whatever? Did I miss this day of school?

So my strategy was to fill the time with my own assignments. Reading books is productive, because I’m a writer and I need to know the current state of the market. Writing my novels is productive because, again, I’m a writer. Watching very specific TV shows can be productive, because I can learn writing skills from them. Going out with friends is productive, because aren’t there social milestones I’m supposed to be reaching?

Most video games were off the table. If was playing a video game, especially one that didn’t have an intricate plot to learn from, couldn’t I be spending this shred of time writing? Puzzles and coloring books were only for when my anxiety reached a fever pitch. Cooking I even scrapped. I was cooking for one, after all. I could get takeout instead, which reclaimed the all-important writing time.

And then the pandemic happened.

Like most lives, mine was entirely changed. It didn’t happen entirely overnight. At first, it just meant I could work from home everyday. Which seemed a bit like a snow day. But it wasn’t long before I realized I had huge swaths of time. No more commute. No more working out at my boxing club. I didn’t have to spend a bunch of time getting dressed nice for work or even putting on makeup. Social plans were a strange myth, like a dream I once had.

My writing dried up as well. I was facing a roadblock in my novel, and I already wasn’t used to working on writing from home. Plus, you know, mental exhaustion from a global pandemic. It made sense to take a break, especially when we were still at the point where we figured this pandemic wouldn’t last more than a few weeks.

Which left me time. And nothing but thoughts to fill it.

At first, I looked at the time as an opportunity to get more done than usual. I could write, maybe not the novel I’d been working on pre-pandemic but something else. I could read ALL the books. Especially after I bought an e-reader. I could even deep clean my home. For crying out loud, I learned how to clean the burners on my electric stovetop! I organized literally everything. My closets, my drawers, my clothes, my books. To the point that I ran out of stuff to organize.

And still there was time.

I was burned out. Exhausted by the state of the world and unsure what to do with my exhaustion. After days where the time available to me grew maddening, I ended up buying Animal Crossing: New Horizons though I had no intention to do so, at least not in a world without a pandemic. But I referred to playing the game as “completing my in-game chores for the day.” Even that I viewed as a to-do list.

I bought puzzles and more video games, but guilt started to weigh on my shoulders as I enjoyed them. These games and puzzles were not a productive use of my time. Not when I could be cleaning something else. Not when I could be finishing another book on my never-ending TBR (to-be-read). Not when I could be writing, even if the thought of doing so felt more like taking a cheese-grater to my forehead in a world of so much darkness and anxiety.

I write about this like I’ve figured my way out of this guilt. Truth is, I definitely haven’t. I had so much time that I decided to spend it writing a blog! I have a gameplay video from the YouTube channel Game Grumps playing in the background, but still I have to working on something productive so I’m drafting a blog post. I don’t like “wasting time.”

A few months ago, however, I came across a tweet on Twitter that depicted a screenshot from the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons that I spent so much time playing in the first few months of the pandemic. In one of the updates to the game that dropped after the initial release, the player was given the ability to swim in the ocean water surrounding your little island paradise, where you had the chance to interact with the character Pascal. When you did, he would offer you a piece of advice. Sometimes, it’s absolute nonsense that makes me smirk. But then the Twitter user @_baomii shared the screenshot at the top of this blog post:

“[…] if you waste your time doing something you enjoy, then you don’t waste time.”

I mean.

Wow.

To have that quote hit me while in the midst of a pandemic where I’m dealing with that exact guilt, and in a game that specifically fits that quote, a game I play, was disruptive to my typical train of thought.

Sometimes, I fall into this trap where I think absolutely every little thing I do is building a sort of life resume. I read the book that people will respect me for reading. I write books that someday people will respect me for writing. I go out with friends on nights when I’m far too tired because that will fill up some imaginary meter that wins me a social prize that doesn’t exist.

A few years ago, I came across a quote in the book We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson that took me completely by surprise: “Memories aren’t currency to spend; they’re us.” (p. 175)

In case it’s not clear by the fact that I’m able to reference this quote complete with page number, this thought struck me enough that I wrote it down. And I’m reminded of it again now as I struggle to take time doing unproductive things just because I want to. Or just pursue things without a clear value to “my future” whatever that means, just because they’re things I want to try.

For example, I started writing poetry during the pandemic for the first time since college because I needed to emotionally, even though I don’t know if I’ll ever share it. I started writing a blog because I wanted to, not necessarily because I thought it would be good for my “writing career.” I’ve spent more than a rational amount of time playing the games Two Point Hospital, Stardew Valley, and PowerWash Simulator (yes, really; I blame Markiplier’s videos of the game on YouTube). I’ve listed to podcasts about fictional desert towns (Welcome to Nightvale), unsolved mysteries and conspiracy theories (Red Web), and cults (The Cult Podcast). I started hiking and riding my bike. I held virtual game nights with friends.

And you know what all this unproductive time has enabled me to do? I edited a book that I thought I had abandoned, to the point that I am now sending that work out to literary agents. The book I abandoned at the beginning of the pandemic? I took the time to replot the thing and wrote a brand new draft I'm about to start editing. My brain feels less crowded.

I think this will always be lesson for me to learn. Like I said, it’s Sunday night and I’m writing a blog post. Still a productive thing, though one I want to do. Once I’m done, I’m closing my laptop and putting my attention to YouTube videos of a video game I grew up with, just because it sounds chill. It’s not productive but it makes my heart less heavy.

That’s enough to make it worthwhile.

References:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Nintendo Switch, 2020.

C A M [@_baomii]. “the way i needed to hear this” Twitter, 3 July 2020, https://twitter.com/

_baomii/status/1278922763818774528

Hutchinson, Shaun David. We Are the Ants. Simon Pulse, 2016.