She would wake up at 4 AM before her cat got the chance to take a long stretchy yawn of the morning. Make coffee for herself and get to work. From 4-9 AM, before the world could amble out of its unmade beds and drag its feet to the toilets, she would be done with a solid 5 hours of painting.
After a break of a couple of hours where she would squeeze strength training or running (depending on the day of the week), she would be back at work - her design studio at noon and continue to work on pushing creative limits till 6.
By 8, dinner would be done and then the daily dose of friends or movies would ensue.
Everything would have space on her schedule. Healthy eating, healthy movement, boundless creativity and time for relationships.
I would want this to be a longer paragraph when maybe someone is writing about my days but sadly, I don’t have three days like this in continuation. Its going to be four decades of me living one earth and yet, why is it that I am dragging myself towards a work-life balance at which I am failing desperately?
What is this elusive bird of paradise that I am unable to catch hold of. It certainly promises the quiet beauty and surrender of self towards the clock. I get a feeling that this balance, this living by the clock would hold the capacity for ultimate freedom from the relentless badgering of fatigue of decision making. I’d be waking up on time irrespective of the season of the year, I’d be eating my protein irrespective of the mood of the day, I’d be a productive member of the society and I would save myself from my own moods and whimsies (of which are innumerable). I’d basically transform into an angel the likes of which hasn’t been seen in human history.
Unfortunately that doesn’t happen. And so it is all the more important to question this irresistible urge towards this gold standard of life everyone seems to be harping about.
Truth is, I would have been okay chasing a standard of life had it not been at odds with my reality, my lived experience. My fondest memories of life so far have been the times when I have unmoored myself and given way to experiences fully submerged. Exams for which I studied whole nights, early dawns seen through my stinging eyes while browsing the vast deserts of blogs written by friends and strangers alike. Sitting by myself reading a book with only the tik-tok of the clock as company - striking 2, then 2:30, then 3:30 am. I remember the outlier days and nights as the time in my life in which I lived the most. Sure, at the time, it was hard to comprehend the importance of those anomalous days, but looking back, every such project that has led me a little off the balance has contributed the most in my personal growth.
The question remains: how to remind myself not to let life go by balancing my days to death. Perhaps the answer lies in compressing life into small moments worth remembering