work

I've recently started to realize that I am a working being. Every fiber of my body, to some extent, has an inherent tendency towards productive activity.

It does not necessarily have to be in the form of typical activities associated with success in society (career related endeavours) but can also include hobbies that have some aspect of self-improvement.

When I am without 'work', I begin to feel aimless, worthless, as if my life is already over. This body, without a trajectory, falls into disrepair and it even seems as if my health begins to deteriorate following the disintegration of the psyche.

And yet, there is a reluctance to grab myself by the throat and will myself into performing the necessary work because of an ingrained doubt that asks, 'what does this really mean to me?'

A perfectly natural concern. After all, nothing really means anything, but the conclusion that can be drawn from that is everything is equally meaningful and therefore worth doing. So perhaps the correct solution here is to just force myself to do the work, regardless of how boring it may seem.

And putting this into practice, I think that this may be true. Work is the antidote to almost all of my worries. Everything else fades to the background when I can reassure myself that, at the very least, I am able to create a product that may be of some benefit to humanity.

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Leisure activity for me is rarely "just" leisure. If it truly is "just" leisure, then it must feel like a reward after a period of work.

Otherwise, there must be some sense that I am progressing in some way, some objective metric to show me that the effort I am putting into the activity is being rewarded. Ideally, everything would be optimized so that I am productive all the time.

Yet on some level, this assertion seems to conflict with previous ideas I had of my nature as being driven solely by interest in novelty and unwilling to work for the sake of work. One could argue that this is how I lived, but this lifestyle clearly produces some detriments.