I am content. I spent the weekend up at my partner’s cottage with his family from Friday to Sunday – and promised myself that while up there, I would do no work, and not look at any screens. 

I abided and soon found myself more relaxed than I've been in a very long time. Staring a new job and continuing my life as I had been for the last few months (socially and creatively) had become too much to bear. I was finding myself getting exhausted during the week, to the point where I was unable to do anything but sleep after work; couple this with a succession of migraines that would not abate and I was a mess. 

I had been hearing that not doing anything and having the courage to just be lazy (that's what it is to me, courageous to be lazy - I fear stagnation and immobility.) will allow you to breathe. I didn't hold this to be true, so I attempted it this weekend and I found something. A sliver of something that inspired me more than I've allowed myself to be in months. I fear being consumed by something that I can't control. Being taken in by a force beyond my own - that force being something they call "the dream" - but the perverse version of that dream. The one where everyone lives in identical houses with lawns and drives cars and has pensions. The one where no one leaves because of some wacked out xenophobia. I think that because I'm being told that I should want this, I want it less and less. I consider it the death of a dream, rather than the dream. 

I've felt this feeling before - long before this. It happened 3 years ago when I was studying for my LSATs. I was long lost in the world that I had promised myself at the tender age of 7: you'll be a lawyer and you'll drive a Ferrari and travel the world before eventually settling into politics. What a lofty idea - but it was what kept burning inside of me, up until I realised that I would rather suffocate in my own vomit before wanting that after all (sorry, graphic). 

I guess that as time wears on, I'm digging deep to be able to relax; to not always feel like I have to be on or that I have to put on a face. I'm learning to be okay with the waxing and waning of my ambition (although it fiercely gnaws away at me) and I'm attempting to reach all the goals I set for myself without stifling my creativity - a balance that is only for the purest of masters, it seems.