I’m having withdraws from productivity

Over the past two weeks I’ve been forced to slow down and take more time to myself. Since I turned 21 I have been overworking myself to death both backwards and forwards.

I’ve been really pressing myself like this to maximize my creative expression. I find all forms of expression and creativity to have various levels of therapeutic benefits to it. I had this recognition for myself and pushed as hard as I could to make it happen. And I did.

But now I’m worn down, tired, and burnt out. The flame of passion I have for creation still blazes strong in me but my body just can’t keep up anymore.

I find my work ethic to be surmised in my workout routines. This year for my routines the biggest lessons learned were based in learning how to maximize my output and rest, while being more attentive to the smaller details of my body to even out how my output is expressed. The first half of the year started out incredibly strong but as I made the switch to only focusing on strength recruitment I found myself in a punishing cycle.

I would never stop working. The drive to perform better each day consumed me unconsciously, I built new walls for myself. My day tethered itself to the output of my expression.
I would awake between 3-330am and be at the gym by 4am, I would workout until 6am at the latest, get back home and shower [during the summer I would be reading The Green Book right after, and would try to do the same for Caribbean Discourse] sometimes I would eat and sometimes I wouldn’t, but then I would work from 8am-5pm, from which I would get home and make my videos. The videos would vary from first being about 60 Days of Ambidexterity to The Art of Fitness or Life Through Lenses. I would never stop working.

I loved it though. I needed it. I needed more.

I was living for me, I was free. Things just made sense, but I knew how I was living wasn’t sustainable.

Flashback to about 2/3 weeks ago. It’s Monday, Leg Day, I love starting my weeks like this. I’m not feeling it too much I’m in a weird space but it’s okay, we do the hard stuff first to make the rest of the week easy. I’m front squatting 265LBS at the peak of this set, I only got it off for 1 rep last week, failing the second rep on two attempts. I was nervous but I love facing my fears. Building up to the weight felt good I felt more confident. But I was shockingly tired after the last set. I knew I felt off pushing like this but discomfort is nothing new. I look in the mirror and get ready. I can do this. There are doubts in my head but I go in spite of it. I drop, it’s heavy, my left arm is struggling to keep the balance, I know that imbalance from surgery is still eating at me and I hate it, I squeeze, I’m tight but falling, I push, I push, I push, it’s slow, it moves, I’m up, the first rep is done, but my back is screaming, it’s not the first time I’ve felt this, but its been years, I rack the weight, and pause.

It hurts to hinge. What a shitty way to start the week. I can’t deadlift or do goblet squats how I want, it hurts, its sharp. Life laughs at me today.

I go home and take a nap, I ice and heat my back to help. I also try to stretch some more but it doesn’t do all that much. I wake up and it hurts to lift my torso. Simply standing radiates pain down my lower body. I’m irritated at everything. Sitting becomes a game of pain tolerance, I’m forced to either lay on my stomach or move around to mitigate the pain.
Over time its come to dissipate but I’ve been forced to shift how I work because of it.

For a while I tried to maintain the same output for my creative work, it was what I was used to. I came to subconsciously attach my value to my production, being forced to sit in a state where I could no longer produce anything I loved to the same degree made me see how I’ve attached so much of myself to what I make.

I struggled to think of things to do to relax, I just wanted to keep making things. But mentally I felt so burnt out. I was at a crossroads, I needed to trust myself to do nothing once again.

To even get to this position of loving to create, I first had to learn to do nothing and be still to learn how to be focused before applying my focus towards things I’m passionate about. But now my passion has cluttered my mind.

I’ve felt that while in this new transitory period I’m in the focus is about trust.
Trusting that I can ease off the gas pedal of my everyday life to still complete my goals, I make myself a busy be because I want to make my life of tomorrow today.
But I literally destroy my body in the process.