Do Nothing
When your entire existence revolves around work
Issue # 37
Hello, my bulging pumpkins, ready to have their guts scooped out,
Welcome to another week of my unhinged rants and raves, you may or may not have asked for. Thanks for being here regardless! xoxo
Learning how to do nothing
I have been working since the ripe age of 7 when I started walking my neighbor’s sweet black lab after school for a toonie. An entrepreneur at heart, dog walking and a paper route were my primary sources of income for the next ten years until I got a job as a hostess at IHOP. Since then, I’ve worked as a salesperson at a lingerie shop where I measured breasts most of my shift, as a dock girl at a fishing lodge where I scrubbed dried-on fish blood off of boats, as a shelter worker where I was paid way too little to clean up biohazards, get assaulted, and respond to life-and-death emergencies, as a tarot card reader at music festivals, and many other jobs you can read more about in this far too long blog post. I love work so much that for nearly five years, I paid to work as a live-in volunteer for a Christian organization.
It’s fair to say I derive purpose from life through work. When COVID hit, I collected CERB for a month before getting a job to get off the couch and out of the house. When I went on mental health leave from my last job, instead of resting and recovering, I spent my days applying to and interviewing for better jobs, along with recording and editing a podcast about work. Even when I fell off a fucking cliff, broke my whole body, and suffered from a severe concussion, I never missed a deadline for the school newspaper I wrote for, no matter how much the editors told me to take time off. I don’t know who I am or why I live when I’m not working.
I’ve kept daily to-do lists and long-term goal lists since I was 12. I’ve overbooked my schedule, signing up for endless commitments for just as long. It’s this endless need to fill an unfillable void. Yet, I have a constant feeling of not having enough time. Never having enough time to do everything I want to do.
This fear of not living life to its fullest potential has devolved into a small obsession over productivity and life “hacks” that supposedly save time. Except that, the time saved just gets spent elsewhere, allowing me to do more, never less.
Last week, I read Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee. It was an anti-productivity book that persuasively argued for finding meaning outside work. If you have the same struggles I do and never seem to have enough time, please read this book.
I want to share with you a few practical tips I learned from this book that I’ve already tried implementing in my life.
Take up a hobby that takes up a lot of time and cannot or will not be monetized.
For me, this hobby has always been cooking. One of the most relaxing ways I can spend a free Sunday is by cooking an elaborate three-course meal for just myself and my boyfriend. I spend most of my free evenings cooking dinners from scratch. I don’t even know how I would monetize this hobby, but even if I did, I know I never would.
Get involved in your community by volunteering, joining a club, being on a committee, getting to know your neighbors, etc. Don’t do it for another line on your resume, but to enrich your life and widen your social circle.
Sadly, I don’t spend a lot of time volunteering these days. But, I do value the fact that I live in a six-unit apartment building where we know and are good friends with all our neighbors. We look out for one another, cook meals for each other, and share groceries whenever someone has too much or too little. Our little building family almost makes me never want to live in a single-detached dwelling, with fences and lawns separating us from other humans.
Stop pretending like you must do everything all the time (ahem, women). Set clear boundaries with your time and deflect all shame that comes your way if you dare be “idle.” Stop doing things for the sake of doing them or out of guilt.
Since working for my current workplace where I’m employed under a union and have near-daily shift exchanges with our incredibly active union rep, it has been drilled into my head to stay within my job description. It feels good not having to constantly prove my worth as a productive member of our team to my superiors without worrying about job security and raises.
As for the note about women, we tend to take on the burden of far too much unpaid labor, both in our households and workplaces. When was the last time your male co-worker was asked to bake a birthday cake for someone at work? If we don’t respect our time and energy, no one else will so start enforcing some boundaries, ladies.
TAKE EVERY VACATION DAY and every ounce of paid absence you are allowed - parental leave, bereavement, etc.
Another great thing about my current job is the three weeks paid vacation time a year and you better believe I’m claiming every last day. At my last job, we were told to save up our 5 days of paid sick leave courtesy of the province to use as vacation days during the week between Christmas and New Year. Ridiculous.
If you always feel as if you never have enough time, track your time. Keep a notebook for a week or two, break up your days into half-hour segments, and write down everything you actually do during that time.
After doing this exercise I was disgusted at just how much time I spent scrolling on my phone. Literal hours can pass by if I’m not careful. I’m not saying turning your brain off and scrolling through reels for a bit is a bad thing. I’m saying that you might feel a bit less anxious and time-scarce if you devoted some of that time to your other hobbies and pursuits that you’re sad about not having enough time to do.
Take lots of breaks and place high importance on unstructured leisure time.
Leisure time looks different for everybody. If you want to know how I would spend my leisure time or “do nothing” time, check out my dopamine menu from last week’s newsletter.
Take time to talk to people (and even strangers). Talking > Texting.
I am very much a this-meeting-could-have-been-an-email person and if given the chance, I would never call another human being in my life if every person and service on earth operated only by text. This book made some very valid points about how the written word is not nearly as evolved as spoken language, which is why text and email conversations greatly lack in emotional depth and words can often get misconstrued.
Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. K, so I literally watched 20 minutes of the first episode and I turned off the TV, I thought it was so stupid. And then my friend convinced me that it doesn’t really start getting good until the third episode and I need to keep going. So, I did. And let me tell you, I binged all eight episodes in a weekend and haven’t stopped thinking or talking about it since. I’m obsessed. Truthfully, it’s the dumbest show, but it’s like a trainwreck, no matter how ugly it is, you can’t stop watching. Also, it really makes me want to visit Utah to take in the mountain views and visit Swig (a popular soda shop).
I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue. I’m about halfway done with this book and so far, I love it. It’s a (romantic?) comedy about how cringy and hellish working in a corporate office is, from the pointless meetings to the secret places you go to cry to petty politics. If you’ve ever worked in an office and felt your soul slowly dying, you’ll love this book.
Crispy Fall walks in Aldergrove Park.
Being in the same room as my two brothers for the first time in I don’t know how long.
Walking around Ikea and realizing a good pillow costs $120?! But then finding an equally good pillow there for just $30.
Decorating the front of my apartment building with some seasonal magic. I’m praying nobody steals or harms these precious plants because that tends to happen in my neighborhood.
My life for the last two months has been processing and preserving all of the produce grown in my garden and given to us by our neighbors. I’ve been making and eating a lot of pickles. Here are some of my favorite recipes:
Pickled Beets
Wash beets and boil until tender, then submerge beets in an ice bath to stop them from cooking any further.
In a saucepan, add: 1 cup vinegar, ½ cup sugar, 1 ½ tsp whole cloves, and ½ tsp salt. Cook to dissolve.
Rub the skin off the beets and slice into thick medallions. Place in jars or containers and ladle the liquid into the jars to submerge the beets.
**Great as a side for the cabbage rolls below, or any dinner really**
Pickled carrots and jalapenos
Peel and slice 3 round carrots into rounds. Deseed and cut 4 jalapenos into thick slices. Thinly slice 1 red or white onion. Pack all the chopped vegetables into a sterilized jar.
In a medium pot, combine 1 1/2 cups water, 1 1/2 cups vinegar, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 1/2 tbsp dried oregano, 1 tsp salt. Bring to a simmer, then take off the heat and let cool for 10 minutes.
Pour the pickling liquid over the vegetables. Let the vegetables sit uncovered until they reach room temperature. Cover and store in the fridge.
**Great on tacos and/or burritos**
Star Anise Daikon Pickles
Peel and matchstick ½ lb daikon and ¼ lb carrots. Thinly slice 6 jalapenos. Toss together and pack into a jar.
In a small sauce pan, bring to gentle boil: 1 cup rice vinegar, ½ cup sugar, ¼ cup kosher salt, 1 tsp whole peppercorns, 4 whole star anise. Stir to dissolve the sugar and salt.
Pour the brine and spices into the jar of veggies. Chill to room temperature before storing in the fridge.
**Great in summer rolls!**
Pickled banana peppers
Sterilize whatever jars you’re using.
Deseed, cut, and stuff peppers into said jars.
In a saucepot, boil: 2 cups vinegar, 1 up water, 1 tbsp salt, ½ tbsp sugar, 1 tsp mustard seed, 1 tsp peppercorn, ½ tsp celery seed, 3 cloves crushed garlic. (Double this recipe if you’ve got a ton of pepper to pickle like I did).
Pour your brine into the jars to fully submerge the peppers.
Let cool until room temperature, screw the tops on and refridgerate.
**Great on pizza!**
Marinara sauce
Sautee a diced onion in some olive oil until slightly golden. If you have an extra carrot or red bell pepper lying around you can dice that as small as possible and throw that in with the onion as well.
To the sauteed aromatics, add as much minced garlic as your heart desires and cook for another minute until fragrant.
Dice your tomatoes and throw those in the pot as well, along with ¼ cup dry red wine, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tsp each: salt, dried basil, thyme and oregano, a crack of pepper and a pinch of red pepper flakes.
Let that simmer until it is less soupy and more saucy, I cooked mine down for about 30 minutes.
Use an immersion blender to make it nice and smooth.
Jar it up and store it in the fridge.
**Obviously, great on pasta!**
Thanks for reading What Am I Doing With My Life.
If we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting - I’m Andrea Sadowski, a writer, photographer, and silly little guy. If you enjoyed this post, here are a few ways you can connect with me:
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I am honored to have written this newsletter and experienced all the joys within these words on S’ólh Téméxw, the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stō:lo Coast Salish peoples.