Am I Having A Good Day?

Lately, I feel like I’ve been consumed with a single question, one that works its way into the different cracks and fissures in my life. That is, am I having a good day? This question seems to confront me constantly, and while it’s almost certainly a thorny externality of my prolonged unemployment, I still can’t dismiss it, nor do I think I should.

How to go about structuring this discussion? Maybe lets start with the quotidian, what am I doing every day that creates this question? I start most days by writing a few words in a digital journal, not far from where this document is being written. The main purpose of that “daily note” is the creation of a to do list, which I can then dutifully check off, and where the ritual of a good day is consecrated. I have tasks that I like to accomplish regularly, be it running, reading or applying for jobs. If running and reading are somewhat Sisyphean in that they are never-ending projects, but their difficulty and import is of my own choosing, then applying for jobs is Promethean in that it feels like an eagle eating my liver every day. Whatever the case, this is where I litigate the “goodness” of my day, I set out goals and then accomplish those goals, and have a written record where I can say I did what I needed to, therefore it must have been a good day. If that were the whole of it, then this article would be much shorter, and profoundly boring, though in fairness it might still be boring anyways.

I suppose the thorn in the side of this otherwise idyllic bohemian life of mine is that I still feel unsatisfied. Maybe more specifically, I have this sense that these goals aren’t totally mine. I have this sense that I am doing all of these things for these abstract externalities, because they contribute to some other, future Brennan that will be glad of them. I do them because they are good for my mind, they are good for my body, but in a way that somehow feels segmented off from me, whatever or whoever that is. This isn’t to say that I think those are bad things, that it’s bad to be fit or well read or something, but that I some times feel like I’m doing those things for the list, rather than myself. I perform tasks because the list is there, and necessitates them, it exerts this odd power over me. Going further, I create these tasks because I will fulfill them, maybe not because they are what I want or need. But this then introduces another question, what is it I want or need? Are my “wants” a trustworthy source? If the answer to that is, as I suspect, no, then how do I choose what to do with my day? This anxiety is like a root growing in concrete, slowly splitting it apart and questioning it’s integrity. Eventually that question has to become, what is good for me? What is good?

This word, productive, productivity, has been lurking in my mind as I write this and it finally takes its form here. Productivity is something that figures largely in this discussion, and it’s hard for me to figure out what I feel about it. I have a sense that productivity is sort of like the pleasure of my normal life. If I’m not in fun mode, then productivity should be at work, which is a potentially problematic situation. I fear falling into the soul-disintegrating trap of “productivity”, of a life, a lived experience, oriented around accumulation of traits and skills that might better acquire me wealth and labour that suits my vanity. 

At the same time, I should acknowledge that my productivity can be, and has been, good for me. Running more has been great, my body feels much healthier and it certainly improves my mood. Making myself read again, and finding a passion for learning and exploration again through more books has been one of the greatest things I’ve probably ever done for myself. I feel like I have a brain, and can build opinions on things, it has been enormously uplifting, so clearly productivity isn’t completely bad. I suppose the question that matters is, am I doing these things for the right reasons? I worry that for me, “productivity” can sort of replace intentionality, which is the other word I’ve been waiting to use. I find that I can absolutely sleepwalk through life, not in that I don’t appreciate things or don’t try to achieve outcomes that are good to me, but I forget to think about why I’m doing things.

Lets briefly reflect here, because I am beginning to lose the plot myself. I’m concerned with what a “good day” is, because I am constantly asking myself whether or not I am having one. Thinking about that more reveals that good days are automatically ones that I have with my friends and family, and outside of that I try to make myself have “productive” days, though that is problematic. I need to ask myself, is productivity simply a bitter fruit, one that I have to careful with, or is there something more essential to it that I can focus on instead?

I think the answer is something like mindfulness or intentionality. These are words that have been devoured by the capitalist media singularity, and now mean overnight oats or monthly subscriptions, but I hope to rescue some of this idea for my use here.

I tend to believe that nothing has an “essence”, nothing has an eternal platonic identity that it will always be defined by. If we are defined, it is by the relationships we are in, of which there are countless. They are biological, historical, social, and cultural, down to the atoms that comprise my brain, this keyboard and your eyes. To borrow some terms from Deleuze and Guattari, they are all machines, which each have different states of becoming. There is no reason to think that one way of being must hold forever, I can change, and those things I am in relationships with will change as a result. Maybe this isn’t a particularly interesting answer, if it all results in “well be mindful!”. What is more interesting is, how can I actually practice that mindfulness? I think its useful to say that, yes there are goals I want, and I need to actually think and reflect on how my actions impact those goals. More accurately, there are relationships that I currently prefer, and I can work towards those. If we accept that all things are defined by the relationships they find themselves in at a specific moment, then all that matters is what sorts of relationships we are implicated in. The sorts of relationships we are in are governed by what we can control, and our attitudes towards things are the first and primary way in which we control, and determine relationships. So the fundamental question is, how should I react to these circumstances? How should I feel towards the world?

In truth, I don’t think I have to, nor should I, feel a certain way towards the world. The world, and me, simply are. I think I should accept the world, and accept that I will be changed, and so will it. I think that ultimately, I am as part of the world as the coffee I just had is part of me, and in that there is the mosaic of emotion and affect and experience that could make a life “meaningful”, which is perhaps the answer to this entire article. In one of my favourite quotations ever, Deleuze says that “There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons” (1992, p.6), and that is what I’m trying to do here, rummage around my mental toolshed like Ash in Evil Dead 2, trying to find new mental conceptions that can help me live a more authentic and actualized life, like a chainsaw-hand-mental-framework. That begins with maybe casting off limiting and controlling perspective of “am I having a good day?” and more asking “what sorts of relationships am I creating?”.

Works Cited

Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control. MIT Press, 59, 3–7. http://www.jstor.org/stable/778828