Jessica McFarland

I don’t relax enough. I work regular hours at a job I get paid for, and then I come home and usually do more work, for which I don’t get paid.

I realised it was starting to wear on me, making me pessimistic and stressed out and generally not a fantastic person.

I used to know how to relax, I’m sure of it. One day I decided to seriously think about it. When I used to relax, I mean, seriously relax, de-stress, forget about everything, what was I doing?

Reading a book? Books are lovely and I adore them, but they aren’t enough to hold my attention if I have a lot going on.
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I walked home from work the other day. I logged four miles in an effort to shake off the boredom of my usual routine.

My route took me over Tower Bridge, that stately yet functional symbol of London. The first time I saw it up close, I was struck by the grandeur of it. That plus the Tower of London itself close by put me in mind of kings and wars, love and death, and all the associated pains of a long, long history.

These days, it’s just a bridge crowded with tourists. I tried to remember how it used to make me feel, and I developed an acute and dizzying nostalgia for the days when London was fresh and new. (Not advisable for when many feet above a body of water.) The wonder and difficulty of my first few months here became edited into a warm glow that creeped over the corners of my vision.

I took a few deep breaths and kept going.
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Anyone who has read Vanity Fair might recognise the title, and realise that I’m about to wax lyrical about the role that the much maligned c-word, “credit”, plays in my life.

I am not a big spender. I am not, for example, a great lover of shoes. I shouldn’t even need a credit card. Unfortunately, given the nature of my work, I never know how much money I am going to make in a month before it has arrived in my account. Meanwhile food must still be purchased, and the Oyster must still be fed. So, often, I will put things like food and transportation on the credit card so that I’ll have cash left over to pay for things like rent and bills, expenses that can’t be taken care of on credit. My mother assures me that this is a sensible way to avoid being evicted.

But when I think about it, it is a bit surreal. If when I add the bank balance to the credit card balance the result is zero, that should mean the same as if I actually had zero money. But it doesn’t. I can continue to pay bills as a functioning member of society as long as there’s a positive somewhere, even if it’s (more than) cancelled out by a negative elsewhere.

So it’s less about the actual amounts in each account, and more about the gradient between the two. Like osmosis, and the ATM is a semi-permeable membrane, and as long as cash can flow from an area of higher concentration to lower, I can get to work and eat dinner.

Furthermore, because this is mostly happening in numbers on a computer screen, with sometimes a little bit of plastic and a chip and PIN reader involved, it hardly seems real. If I actually have no money when I add all the accounts together, and no actual cash in my wallet, yet I can still go around and do pretty much anything I want, then surely I am living in a Star Trek-esque money-free economy based on, I dunno, love and trust and Vulcans. And well, that’s pretty okay. And I’m going to remember that the next time I start to worry about money. Pointy ears, yeah.

(Though, come to think of it, living well on nothing a year didn’t turn out so well for Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair. Better for Reese Witherspoon, but only because liberties were taken with the film version. Must assess situation.)

Ugh. I shouldn’t let myself get so tired.

My eyelids are drooping, even though I’ve been on a steady drip of tea, coffee, and coca cola all day long. Work was a major mission; after work activities nearly as much of one.

I should have gone to bed earlier last night, like I should be going to bed now. But there’s so much to be done! I love creating things, writing, playing music, too much these days to let sleep become a priority.

It’s fantastic. I’m finally one-of-those-people, an artist-type, yielding to a higher power, answering the call of the muse. I worked at getting here. I’ve been cajoling myself into creating something most nights for months now, until it has become a habit. I have altered my behaviour. (Yessssss.)

But, as I said before, man am I ever tired. I budgeted time for everything except sleep. This was a miscalculation. I’ve accomplished all the little things I want to do in a week, but now I feel I could sleep for a year.

Oh, I can feel it now. Sleep is becoming exciting again. During the week it seems to get in the way of having a life outside of going to work and coming home. But tonight I’m going to fill the hot water bottle and curl up in a duvet and not set an alarm. Or better yet, set it for a good hour after I normally wake up, and then alternately listen to Heart Radio and hit the snooze button. It will be amazing.

Because being tired is so very lame. I don’t think straight. I’m not thinking straight now. I wait until I’m at the point of exhaustion, and then I decide I need to solve all the problems in my life, the lives of people I know, and major world issues. Then I get frustrated when solutions aren’t forthcoming.

But sleep magically fixes these things, and everything looks better in the morning. Good night!