Slow down — Blog — Healy Chen

Take it easy

It’s been said that depression is dwelling on the past, and anxiety is focusing on the future. To be perfectly content, you must be attentive to right now.

I guess my anxiety lately then is focusing too much on what’s coming next, even though I am thoroughly enjoying nexts that are coming up. Life is going great. I like the work that pays me well, and my hobbies and whatnot is intensely fulfilling. But that doesn’t obviate the fact there is a list of things to do, every day. Things need to get done, no matter that I enjoy doing them.

And there lies the problem. I would wake up and get anxious about the to-do list. You know how back in the schooling days, we would get home from school and eagerly tackle our pile of homework. Because we know that soon as we finish, we can go do the fun stuff, like playing video games. I’ve been treating my daily to-do list kind of like that: to get them done as quickly as possible so I can relax.

But that’s the thing: I can’t relax. There is no leisure to be found when knowing that the very next day - after a wonderful night of sleep - I have to do it all over again. So I end up chasing this phantom that never arrives. Sure, I am getting things done - but to what end? If all of this is what I want to do, why can’t I seem to achieve this promised peace of mind?

What I need to avoid is speed-running through life. The only thing waiting at the end, is death. I have to slow all the way down. Don’t walk so fast to get to work. Take my time and allow in the magic of the walk itself.

That’s what I am working on these days: slowing the F down.

No hurries

One thing I was constantly reminded of last week is to have a bit of patience. Things and events are going to take the time they need. I cannot control it. I cannot make it go faster. Trying to control how quickly the future arrives is utterly futile. So is betting my happiness on that future arriving. This is how you speed-run through life, the days seemingly becoming shorter and shorter.

If something is taking longer than I would want, I should simply enjoy it for what it is, to immerse myself within that ambiguity.

Because forcing speed out of life is how mistakes are made. Last week I was working on reviving a Dell workstation at work. The going was super slow, each tactic I’ve tried not only takes a long time, but have not achieve the result I wanted. Nearing the home stretch of a process, I made a simple but critical error. This resulted in complete data lost on one of the hard-drives. There’s no anguish in our IT support profession quite like having to inform a user their precious data is gone. There is no rewind button.

Looking back now, I’m not sure why I was in such a hurry. Honestly, once I’m done with the workstation there will be other tickets to work on (as there is this week). It’s not as if I get to relax and read a book or something. I think I was just frustrated that my initial troubleshooting steps have returned very little. A punch to the ego that perhaps I’m not as competent as I think I am (which is true). Unfortunately, that frustration led to an enormous mistake.

In work and in life: remember to slow down and be patient.