 I have an ongoing, perverse fascination with rage and violence. The motivation, the dynamics, the deeds. I’ve always been interested in what drives some people toward extreme aggression, but my curiosity has been intensified recently by the media — both real-life events in the news and fiction.
I am fortunate to never have been the victim of physical violence. Not really. Once, a long-term boyfriend 20 years ago grabbed me by the collarbone during a heated argument and left a bruise, but if I am being honest, he was just protecting himself from a rabid girlfriend. We were so broken by that point, neither of us could see straight. Our fights about infidelity and betrayal (on both sides) had escalated to the point of absurdity. Our fear of letting go had not yet overridden the pain of staying in the relationship. Our love had morphed into loathing. That day, in a gas station parking lot, I was belligerent and completely off the chain. I don’t remember what I said, but I’ll never forget the moment I went too far.
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 Last week was the first one in the two years since I started my little ol’ website that I didn’t write a blog post.
It had to happen, and here’s why. It was a hectic Monday morning. I had been sick for the prior 10 days, and I was way behind on more than a few projects. I was scrambling to get organized, return some calls and tie up some loose ends that had gotten badly frayed the week before. I was a hot mess. My brain was still hazy, so coming up with a viable blog topic became a futile pursuit. The only things I could think of to say involved a litany of complaints of how shitty I felt. And lemme tell you what, feeding the self-pity monster is never good for my mental state. By about 2 p.m. on Monday afternoon, after hours of worrying over not having a single word on the page, a radical thought occurred to me: “What if — just what IF — you skip a week, Amy?” And so I did.  There’s a relatively new aphorism circulating the interwebs lately that has gotten my attention. It says, simply, “Stop the glorification of busy.” After doing some cursory research, I gleaned that it was lifted from the headline of a blog written in reaction to a book published earlier this year by Arianna Huffington.
Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass where it came from, I only care that it perfectly captures my philosophy about work. Reflecting on the current state of my career is especially apropos because this week marks the second anniversary of my decision to start my own freelance writing and media consulting business. I didn’t quit my full-time job until about six months later, but that pivotal decision in September 2012 is the one that really set the wheels in motion for the career I have today. There were a lot of reasons I decided to venture out on my own — the potential to make more money, the freedom to choose who I work with and when, not being beholden to any one person or entity ... aka The Man — but the main reason was I wanted have a good life, not just a good job. See, I have always, always worked to live and not the other way around. Today, I love what I do, but it’s just work. I do it so that I can maintain a home and a lifestyle that make me happy. The work itself is not the source of my happiness. Never has been. |
About Amy HiggsA former newspaper columnist, Amy takes her random, slice-of-life stories to the web. After 12 years, she's still just saying. Archives
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