Is Leisure Coaching a Thing?
Teach me how to kick back
I am not doing so hot with this week off. Don’t believe that? Ask my husband.
See, there is a lot I want to do before I die and some of them are on-the-books impossible. For instance, I am infertile, have too little patience for the science needed to become a large animal veterinarian, missed the boat (thanks, Mom, and your darned feminist choice to not exploit the cuteness of my younger years) on the kiddie beauty pageant circuit, like my long nails too much to work it on guitar, and chose to break-up with and not return to that one person who broke my heart and I can’t get out of my head who came back years later when I was too happy and content with another to follow up on a future I always kind of wondered what might today be like if I had. I am capable of a lot, but time and energy are not infinite economies, but I (we all), nonetheless, have a good deal of wiggle room and plenty of agency.
Ambition. Now that is a resource which comes in abundance. I, for one (no surprise at all here), have a lot of ambition. I am happy at the ‘what if’ or ‘maybe’ way of approaching, well, anything, and have a canny means of getting to those spaces. Please: that is not excellence or exceptional aptitude. Rather, it is a mix of not having any kind of fantasy life – in that I don’t really dream about things I can’t or couldn’t do; a/k/a I get off on the tangible. I romanticize not about celebrities but about people I have met, and I don’t mean the random NYC celebrity encounter, but like, people I have worked with or went to school with, see in the neighborhood, are friends of friends or exes (I fantasize a lot about exes, and dear exes who come upon this: I so hope you too think fondly and salaciously about me.) I also only want things that I will use and houses with rooms that I will go into and outfits I will wear. I am not very creative in that; I just kinda like what I got going on is all, so yeah, like maybe a spot with one extra bedroom sure, but no second home or private island for me – no thank you. HARD pass! Also, I have endured a lot of changes (psst: you have, too) and from that I know that the best ones may start bombastically but their true reality rolls out in small, measured developments and ripples. And so, TRUE dreaming, that kind of dreaming that is best translatable unto actual life, is too incremental dreaming. Like a great lunch you can make or seeing what you can do with that piece of furniture if you moved it to that other place in your apartment. That is the kind of dreaming you can ‘do’.
The other kind is escapism. And escapism is most certainly cool, in its place. Where the confusion (or confusions) occur is when the escapist fantasy becomes something we seek to move from that space into the IRL one. That can be a thing. You can do that. That can happen. That is exactly how a lot of wonderful things come into our present, shared dimension. Likely two things happen instead – one we rocked forward and so that thing lives, or (more likely) we stop cold.
More interesting and, perhaps relatable, is the hard stop, right? So why might this be where things so sadly, too commonly end? Well – for (also) two reasons, once a whim starts to be investigated as a possible real, doable thing, it can lose its sparkle and be a REAL creativity killer. Think about trying sex in nature and getting poison ivy in your butt-crack. On the other hand, the BIG thing as we look to approach it is suddenly a monolith. Like one’s eyes and spirits white-wall Bambi style.
Addressing that hindrance is about nothing less than strategy creation. If you have strategies for big projects about ‘where to start” and “how to proceed” that can become clear, great! Try that! If you don’t, please know that is accessible, very accessible. All you need to do is to learn a few tips and approaches, a real skill set for mountain climbing. And so, you hire a coach as a Sherpa of sorts in that, and together you tackle that thing. [Details available via coaching convo … GIT y’all]
Well, hey, what if you are a coach and you have a big thing before you like a vacation and you are very much struggling with NOT working. Look, it is, anxiety notwithstanding, for good reason. Very good reason, as I like/love/enjoy my work. Super. BUT. It is not all that, is it? It is bigger. It is about identity and enjoyment, JUST LIKE THE SHIT THAT TRIPS UP ACHIEVEMENT, so is the difficulty I am having this week here taking off.
See, as we sometimes see ourselves as failures or procrastinators, or lazy, or too much or not enough something, that means we can’t do whatever the ‘this’ is that we want.
For my part, the identity thing that is keeping me from goofing off in full is that I have real difficulty feeling of value if not being of service or doing something or checking off a box of some kind. I have always been rewarded for ‘doing’; I am great at ‘doing’, I like ‘doing’ but ‘being’…? With that I have a lot less experience, and earnestly, I don’t know if I am of value as an entity who just ‘is’.
Of course, I am. OK? Like ‘duh’. All persons are, just as they can be successful and achieve tangible goals repeatedly, so are they worth existing and not doing anything. That is an empirical fact. However, facts and feelings are so not always related/in conversation/friends and perhaps even complete strangers. But you know what, that does not need to be the case. Folx can meet and get to know each other and become partners. Most certainly in this case all we need is practice. Like, try it. Try to get a partner for the strategy – and that is where we come back to my vacation troubles.
See, there may not be a coach of kicking-back (yet) but there are friends. And so, I have chocked the week full of hang outs and phone calls and assigned myself with a list of folx to text and check in on that I have not necessarily had the time to do in more busy times. Think of them as accountability partners for fun. Add to those bookings for appointments like massages and nail whatnot (budget permissible, of course) to keep on pointe for enjoyment. And too – not leaving the house. A complicated thing to speak on in the era we are in – no need to say more – but for my part, as a person who ‘goes to work’ in my office every day and is rarely home. The Bullock domicile being the domain of my house husband, and that wonderful person takes care of all the things there and there is no computer there and therefore if I spend the entire day there, working is legit not possible. Like a monastery for a manic ‘doer’ like myself. A very personal share, the point of which is and being a kind of architecture, environment, team of persons committed to, facilitating, and validating the choice to take time off.
An example of that in the work world could be co-working with other job searchers to search in community, that can involve bitching which always helps! Join an entrepreneurial group if that is your bag, study hours student mates, writers meet ups – you hear me. Coaches can be a route, but the bigger point is solitary attempts at strategy finding are unnecessarily hard and, well, lonely.
Very, very last here – if you care, I am doing OK during this break. Right now, that is – I have struggled a good bit with it, but now, doing alright. I think I have learned to relax, a bit. And already set aside more chucks of doing nada in coming months. I learned I can, and learning, well, that is the thing we are to be here for.
