On Doing Nothing And Hating It

A little over a year ago, back when you could do such things, I found myself at a “mindfulness” session, hosted by a fitness startup and held at a retail location in Flatiron for an athleisure brand that would later end up acquiring the fitness startup. I went because I was reporting a feature on the startup and I thought going would add good color, and maybe I’d learn something. I don’t know much about being good at mindfulness or meditation. I’m not sure I’ve ever relaxed once in my life. I can’t be alone with my thoughts in complete silence. I walk around my apartment with an old episode of a podcast playing out of my iPhone speaker while I make tea, or I listen to an episode of Criminal Minds while I make revisions to a story, or, as I am doing right now, I relisten for the thousandth time to Dua Lipa’s 2020 album while writing.

In pursuit of addressing my lack of chill, I reflected on a time that illustrated my complete inability to relax. When I first started seeing my therapist 15 months ago, I marched into her office on day one with a hand-written chart, color-coded in highlighter by urgency and priority, of things I wanted to discuss. Much in the same way that I showed up every day fall semester freshman year to COM 107: Communications and Society, sat in the front row, raised my hand to answer every question, and completed every extra credit assignment even though I already had an A, I was trying to impress my therapist. I admitted this to her a week later when we started getting into the real stuff but I didn’t have to. She told me this is a…