It’s 9:45 p.m. You put in an extra, late spurt – for supper, you had a toasted sandwich at your desk, brushing the occasional crumb from the keyboard while you kept at it. It was difficult. But now it’s done. You have made the progress you had hoped to. Probably, it will all start again in the morning, but you will be working off a solid base – it won’t be the familiar scramble to catch up.
You are worn out. You had to make yourself stick at it – but now you are glad you did. There is a gentle ache in the middle of your back. You yawn and turn your neck from side to side; you stretch around and try to massage an awkward spot below your left shoulder blade. In a while, you will need to head off to bed – but not just yet. It is nice to linger and spin out the moment of repletion. It is lovely to saunter about and make a cup of tea. You might flick indifferently through the newspaper. You can’t get engaged: your brain has done its work and shies away from any further efforts.
The pleasure we feel after a good but hard day’s work is linked to a positive experience of willpower. It was tempting to break off; you could have put it off until tomorrow (you have often done that in the past); you could have become distracted (which is achingly familiar); you could have stayed physically at your desk but actually been fantasising about trips to in New York and Japan next year or finding out what your favorite author is up to at the moment. But you didn’t. You stuck with the big thing.
It’s also to do with a sense of mastery: in anticipation, we slightly feared the task. But we got on top of this tricky thing, and we tamed it. There were points when it felt we might not: it was too difficult; a solution seemed elusive; there were too many things we were trying to get right at the same time; a mass of details needed to be reduced to a simple, coherent shape – though it wasn’t at all obvious what this could be. An awkward email needed a tactful but firm response; a refusal had to be delivered without a sting; a criticism needed to be put forward delicately but very clearly. A hunch had to be turned into a proposal – and there is always a difficult point at which what had, from a distance, seemed like a good idea starts to look much less impressive close up, yet it was onto something …. only what exactly? Maybe you had to revise a report, and you dreaded unpicking work you had already done and facing the same old issues once again. We have been labouring against the normal forces of disintegration. Things that were scattered and messy have been brought together, harmonised, tidied up, elucidated. We have done something fundamental. We have held back the tide of chaos.
The pleasure of a long, productive project hints at a bigger theme. It is not simply about this moment and the particular tasks we have polished off. It is a promise that other problems can be faced as well. We are reminded of a capacity within ourselves to deal with difficulties, to get on top of challenges and to keep going until they are under control. We are seeing in ourselves an antidote to the fear of drifting. We naturally worry we will be swamped by demands; we know our own unfortunate tendency to let things fester. But right now, we are conscious of something else. We are capable of rousing ourselves, of focus and of sustained efforts. We can stick with something difficult and keep going through the temptations to break off and seek distraction. We have been just a little bit heroic, and we know it, and it feels nice.
Exhaustion is – all too often – a reason to have to give up because one’s strength has failed too soon. The brain starts to melt when really we should be getting on with a big task; the mind is worn out, while the problem remains unsolved. Instead, now, we are experiencing honourable or worthy tiredness. Instead of getting annoyed with ourselves for lacking energy, our pleasant tiredness feels like the natural and just reward for our labours. It’s setting us up for a good night’s sleep.
With this being said, my new book has been born.
Order it from any bookstore or on Amazon.
Thank you so much for reading my stuff.