{"id":1142,"date":"2020-12-26T18:31:34","date_gmt":"2020-12-27T02:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2020-12-26T18:32:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-27T02:32:30","slug":"life-actively-trying-to-be-inactive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/2020\/12\/26\/life-actively-trying-to-be-inactive\/","title":{"rendered":"Life: Actively trying to be inactive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>My mother apologized a few years back for keeping me so BUSY in childhood.  Her mother did it to her, and while her family was Catholic, it still felt like a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Protestant_work_ethic\">Protestant Work Ethic<\/a>&#8221; problem: <em>busy people of all ages with no time to think will be docile and have no time to sin! Business = godliness!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being &#8220;busy&#8221; to the point of not really having a life is a difficult habit to break, and so there are self-help articles about how other cultures do it.  Wrapping the idea of rest or passivity in labels and costumes from another culture feels hip and exotic.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My favorite versions of these are my various Zen Buddhist books, which encourage us to sit, breathe, and observe our thoughts.  <em><span class=\"has-inline-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color\">(I have a list of friends who confide that they MUST NOT, under any circumstances, be alone with their thoughts, and I honestly worry for them.)   <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Dutch are hip and have a word\/concept for what we in California might call &#8220;chilling,&#8221; about being in and aware of your surroundings <strong><em>without multitasking<\/em><\/strong>, which is a nice reminder that such things are possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"embedly-card\" data-card-key=\"cf0c85876b374605ac8d29f81634eb25\" data-card-theme=\"dark\" data-card-type=\"article-full\" data-card-align=\"left\"><h4><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/2019\/12\/12\/dutch-have-name-doing-nothing-its-called-niksen-we-need-more-it\/\">Perspective | The Dutch have a name for doing nothing. It&#8217;s called niksen, and we need more of it.<\/a><\/h4><p>Last year, I quit a terrible job in corporate middle management. I was stressed all the time, traveling once or twice a month, occasionally internationally, and work followed me everywhere: from the first email in the morning, sometimes as early as 5 a.m., until the last texts late into the evening.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<script async src=\"\/\/cdn.embedly.com\/widgets\/platform.js\" charset=\"UTF-8\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">~~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My holiday time off &#8211; several consecutive days in a row! &#8211; is jarring, since I&#8217;ve been doing metaphorical firefighting for so long that moments of calm <em>almost<\/em> make me uncomfortable.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a creative person, I need this time to unwind and think my own thoughts, yet can still feel like I need to be &#8220;busy&#8221; with work that OTHERS deem &#8220;productive,&#8221; and that will never get me anywhere I want to go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s <em>nice<\/em> to be reminded that I can<em> (with effort and practice)<\/em> relax and appreciate being alive without judging myself harshly for doing so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mother apologized a few years back for keeping me so BUSY in childhood. Her mother did it to her, and while her family was Catholic, it still felt like a &#8220;Protestant Work Ethic&#8221; problem: busy people of all ages with no time to think will be docile and have no time to sin! Business &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/2020\/12\/26\/life-actively-trying-to-be-inactive\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Life: Actively trying to be inactive&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,135],"tags":[144,170],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-life","tag-mindfulness","tag-rest"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1148,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions\/1148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}