26. Blogs and Dogs & The Philosopher's Stone

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

And though they may have very well been, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, and more specifically that sentence, kicked off a series of books that were anything but. The Harry Potter books are quite literally unbelievable. Over half a billion (billion!) have been sold worldwide.

I was addicted to them when I was younger. My favourite book is the sixth, though I’ve probably read the first four, without exaggerating, at least 20/30 times each. After smashing through the Biff & Chips in early primary school, the Potters were basically the only books I ever read growing up. Your Lord of the Flies, your Catchers in the Rye and your Great Gatsbys all got patched. I wasn’t interested in reading anything that didn’t revolve around Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Now, seeing as 15 years has passed since my Potter obsession, I appreciate it may seem like a bizarre time to bring this up. So, to quote Professor Dumbledore, “let me explain.”

The website that you’re currently on was set up to try and discuss, observe, reflect and generally encourage open and honest chat around all things to do with health and wellbeing. Whether it does that is of course a different story, but that's always been the ambition.

I’m someone that, without regular focus and attention on my overall wellbeing, has a remarkable tendency to slip into overthinky mode and generally feeling quite down.

Staying on top of this is something that’s much easier said than done. It’s a bit of a minefield (or should I say a Triwizard Maze), and one that seems to be ever changing and constantly evolving.

To oversimplify it somewhat, I’ve found that I seem to be at my optimal level of ‘happiness’ (in want of a better word) when I manage to hit that sweet spot between overdoing it and under-doing it, in whatever area of life that may be. Whether that’s socialising, exercising, work, hobbies, relaxing, relationships etc etc.

As someone who’s quite ‘all in or all out’, getting that balance is a constant challenge. Generally speaking, I’ve found that too much of these types of things leave me exhausted, whereas not enough leave me bored and irritable.

In that ongoing search for that optimal sweet spot, I feel like I’ve gone full scale across most of those different areas. For example, going far too heavy on the leisure front, and committing my life to video games, nights out and arm curls as my most challenging form of exercise. Then, inevitably, being hit (at a relatively late age) with the realisation that although fun in the short term, this type of behaviour probably isn’t conducive to many of the longer term ambitions I may have had.

My solution to this? Yes, going 180, and basically becoming obsessive about graft and productivity. You know the type of stuff; your 5am wake ups, your unsustainable working hours, your multiple workouts a day, your giving up of alcohol, and your generally seeing chilling out as a waste of time. All to overcompensate for the extensive years of leisure, and to be honest, probably also to overcompensate for how I felt about myself.

I don’t want to say either is right or wrong per se, but for me, I know there’s definitely a healthy and sustainable balance between the two extremes. A happy medium between working hard, but also having a laugh and getting stuck in to some serious downtime.

On that point, I had an incredibly enjoyable conversation earlier this year, with a very close pal called Lindsay. He won’t mind me saying this (because I’ve asked him), but he’s been through a similar journey - i.e. from being overly lazy, to being overly grafty, and relentlessly doing all those ‘productive’ things I mentioned earlier that we often hear are so good for us.

However, as opposed to doing those things because we enjoyed doing them, we were doing them because they were supposedly beneficial. And there’s a huge difference.

When in this ‘grafty’ mindset, I’ve found that it’s very easy to get into this strange sort of productivity guilt trap, where you feel guilty about spending any sort of time not being productive or ‘optimising your time’.

If you’re not doing something to improve at it or to work towards some sort of goal, then you’re wasting your time. This, possibly more than anything, is what I believe is the great downside of the whole self-development world. It can condition us to become obsessive about improvement, at the detriment of doing things simply because we enjoy doing them.

And how can that often leave us feeling? Yep. Tired. Burnt out. And generally fucked.

A penny had dropped. Maybe there’s not a need to be constantly productive, or doing things just to get better at them. Instead, maybe there’s real value in doing things just for the love of doing it…

I was back home in Luxembourg a couple of months ago, and on the back of said penny drop, decided to make the executive decision to get this whole productivity thing in the bin for a while. I included writing as part of that. Basically, anything that required any sort of effort or brain power was chucked in the skip. Time to completely relax.

So, what to do with my time? Well, as you do, I decided to re-read the Harry Potter books.

The result? I loved it. It was, quite literally, magic.

Firstly, the serenity. My parents live in the Luxembourgish countryside (which yes, is basically the whole country outside the capital city). Now, I don’t know how much you know about the Luxembourgish countryside, but as you can probably imagine, it’s pretty remote. When you’re sat outside, the only noise you can hear is the chirping of birds and the bleating of sheep. And occasionally my parents having a heated debate about something like the weekly shopping list.

Now, compare that to London (where I currently live). I love living here, it’s an incredible city, but also a full on one. The Schuttrange countryside is almost the total contrast in terms of pace, noise, general busy-ness, and other people acknowledging your existence.

This contrast is something I’m really fortunate to have, and try to appreciate it every time I head back home. It was especially evident this time. The tranquillity, which was enhanced by the beaut weather, the limitless flow of coffee and decent scran, and re-reading Hagrid telling Harry that he's a wizard, was blissful. One of those unintentionally meditative experiences, where you feel all stress and tension leave your body.

It wasn’t just a great little set up, but an incredibly nostalgic one too. I love the feeling of nostalgia (which, side note, has been shown to be a comfort for anxiety - probably why I like it so much). It's something I always feel when I'm back home, and these various throwbacks to my childhood - Simpsons mug, Potter book and eating copious amounts of Pancakes - just massively enhanced this chilled out, stress-free state.

(Ironically, you probably need a magic wand to identify that as the 1st Harry Potter book)

There is, of course, the flip side to this. The downside. As there is in any situation.

I’ve found that there’s a weird paradox when it comes to holidays (or general down time). Obviously, we want it to be good. But the better or more relaxing it is, the harder it can be to go back to the stresses and demands of regular life.

I massively noticed this when I was in Luxembourg. The combination of being home and getting stuck into so many things that were part of my childhood, I felt myself almost regressing back into a kid in terms of my outlook towards responsibility. I.e. essentially thinking something along the lines of “This is fun and easy. Real life is hard… fuck this, I’m going to live out the rest of my days drinking coffee, eating pancakes and reading Harry Potter.”

Ok, a slight exaggeration, though it did feel that in direct proportion to all stress and worry leaving my body, so did any sort of motivation to work hard, push myself, and do anything remotely challenging.

In this instance, that was ideal, as it was the conscious intention of the holiday. However, in more regular day-to-day circumstances, I do know that for me, this outlook can have detrimental consequences in the longer term. This lack of ambition to work hard or push myself can in the short term be very relaxing, though if this attitude in maintained for extended periods, can be a very slippery slope towards laziness, boredom, a sense of meaningless and inevitably, feeling down.

Although that wasn’t the case here, from experience, I know (all too well!) that if done in excess, it’s an inevitability. The pursuit of pleasure to avoid the difficulties of life isn’t necessarily a sustainable strategy. And rather aptly, it was Albus Dumbledore himself who acknowledged that “Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”

I suppose, to go back to that balance/sweet spot point from earlier, it’s just being conscious of that potential excess trap.

As I say, this is more of an acknowledgement of a potential downside to excessive downtime - I’m not suggesting we all live lives of lying in the garden, gorging ourselves, and reading about wizards.

However, to go 360 back to the point of this post, and this may be self-evident, but goodness me there’s a power in just doing something for the love of doing it - as opposed to worrying about the longer term impact of that action.

And this self-imposed week away from this ‘productivity pressure’ was blissful.

This post is, more to myself than anything, a reminder and encouragement to see the value of that and of re-evaluating that work/play balance for a calmer, happier and ultimately mentally healthier state.

Which, in a world that can be as challenging as our one, can probably be a good thing.