Scary shit. #FuckCapitalism

Before you continue: If you haven’t read my recent Witch Letter, I implore you to do that first. That’ll give you some of the related thoughts that I have already thought out loud. It’s number 9, all the way at the bottom. You will also be able to sign up to it there, so do that, too!

A note on privilege: I mention it a few times throughout, but please know that I am privileged as fuck, no matter how boohoo some of this sounds. I have white privilege, a good chunk of socio-economic privilege, I have access to a car and the internet and a bunch of other online gadgets. I have a roof over my head, clean water on tap – both hot and cold, electricity and all the modern amenities of what we consider “normal” in a household in the “West”. I have two degrees, had access to mostly free education and have access to free healthcare; including the dentist and optician thanks to the benefits I am entitled to in the UK. I can live independently and make do with the inaccessible aspects of my home. I also live in London where public transport is ACE. I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but this gives you a good idea of where I’m at and hopefully something to think about regarding your own privilege.

Right. Now that we’ve got all that sorted, let’s talk about making not working the standard.

Wait, what?!

Yes, you have read it all right so far. I am making NOT working the standard. First in my life and then, hopefully, in yours. Now let me say from the beginning: I am not inventing this. The biggest influence on my thoughts on rest and not working is Tricia Hersey and her, well, work with The Nap Ministry as well as her book Rest is Resistance. From there, I have found many other creators and spaceholders, whom I’ll reference accordingly.

Another… caveat, I guess, is that I am disabled and on benefits. I have been on benefits for quite a while but I have also felt a lot of shame and guilt around that for many years. Most of my life, really, because I grew up on benefits, too. The physical disability is more recent and – from what I can tell – temporary, but it is here now and made me adapt.

Let’s talk about benefits

Here’s the thing about benefits, though. Many people will say that it is oh-so-easy to make the decision to not work as a default. Sure. You can believe that. And in some ways, it is true. Particularly, when you’re classed as limitedly capable to work. Yeah, I had to look that word up, it’s a thing. In other ways, I would argue that it is often harder to make that decision:

1. Because the money isn’t enough to cover all bills and food. There needs to be a source of free food or some other income or you’ll suffer and accumulate debt with places like your energy supplier.
2. The guilt and the shame! The way society under capitalism works is that we tie our self-worth – and our value to society! – to our productivity. Imagine getting money for doing nothing. It’s a mindfuck.

Receiving benefits is also a privilege. Of course it is. Sadly. There are many people in the UK who SHOULD get benefits but don’t. Many more who don’t get everything they’re entitled to. Looking at you, PIP claim procedure.

Burnt out, anyone?

At the same time, I genuinely think that a whole lot more people should stop what they’re doing (working a million jobs just to get by or *just* burning out in the one job they have) and claim benefits. Because burnout is a mental health issue. It comes with physical and mental ailments and illnesses that are no joke and can become chronic in no time if you don’t stop. What stopping the grind would do is make the system break down and that is really what I’m after. We need to be really fucking honest with ourselves and that we cannot live like this, burning our bodies into the ground.

I also think the reasons many people aren’t doing this are

• guilt
• shame
• pressure from a partner/family
• pride
• fear
• the lack of community, which provides a safety net

Which one’s yours?

Sudden disability is a bitch

This one is having a chokehold on me. According to today’s definitions, I have always been mentally disabled; definitely mentally ill. Just too proud to accept that. I even got rid of my disability pass (that’s a thing in Germany) VOLUNTARILY because of my fucking pride. Yeah, I know.

Physically, however, I have always been the epitome of health. Super important as a fat person as well. One of the things we compensate with for our fatness, you know?! And then I started bleeding as if it’s my full-time job (the irony!) and we have finally figured out I’m perimenopausal and have been for 12 years because I had chemotherapy. The joy.

All these ailments

Anyway, that whole combination left me physically disabled and suddenly, too. It felt like I was fine one day and couldn’t really even walk anywhere the next. In fact, it was more gradual than that. But I didn’t see a doctor because I thought I had just become a little unfit. Ha! Life-threateningly low haemoglobin. Two blood transfusions and a whole lot of iron since then. That was slightly terrifying.

So my default right now IS doing nothing because I physically can’t really do much. I can’t stand for long, I can’t walk very far. It comes with muscle pain, heart palpitations, even heavier bleeding (as if 24/7 isn’t enough, please, also make it super heavy!), a little bit of incontinence and a whole load of excruciating headaches and migraine episodes. It is exhausting. On top of that, this whole ordeal brings my mood down, so on my worst days – which may come in waves and get me into bed for days or weeks on end – I plunge into depression and only come up for air to get a dose of anxiety on top.

It’s not easier to do nothing when you’re disabled

Yes, there’s still loads of internalised ableism, thank you very much. And yes, I have been MADE to do nothing because of my disabilities. But that doesn’t make any of this easier. For me, it makes it harder. I have a very hard time accepting that, for example, cleaning the house (a one bedroom flat) takes me AT LEAST a week. Not the 4-5 hours in one day it did before it became as bad as it is now. It’s a mindfuck, particularly when you’re conditioned into oblivion by capitalism.

A new rhythm

With all of that going on, I am still in the process of finding a new rhythm for my life. A supportive sleep-wake cycle that gives me room to have loads of daylight and write posts like this in the middle of the night (it is currently 12.23 am). A gentle routine for my mornings and evenings, so that my personal hygiene is intact and the dishes are done (huge drag for my mental health if they’re not!); at least most days. It is a struggle.

I’ve also figured out that I’m still in the middle of burnout. Not *just* normal burnout, no, also autistic burnout. I reckon I have been in this place a lot in my life but had to override it to be a “functioning member of society”. Particularly being non-verbal and allowing that to happen is new for me. Looking back at a lot of situations in my life when I was non-verbal really hurts. Most of the time, I was then made to speak because people wouldn’t understand why I was having a meltdown, like crying uncontrollably for hours on end and for no apparent reason. It’s called grief, look it up. At least that’s the situation I’m thinking of right now. There were many others. To the point that my first school reports not only attested that I was quiet (I’m also an introvert, so what’s new?) but also that my verbal expression was not as good as my written expression. In many ways that is still true. But also: It’s never been bad. Expressed in grades, it was a B instead of an A. Laughable, really. But it had a massive impact on my self confidence way into adulthood. Anyway, when I have time to think, I find it easier to express myself. What a revelation.

Non-negotiables

Over the past five and a half years of running this (still not profitable) business, I have had a few non-negotiables:

• I don’t do Mondays. For a long time, I was also always offline on Mondays because WOW these screens have power over me. In very rare cases – like a full moon in Aquarius, for instance – I will go and meet someone or talk to someone. But work? Please. My week starts on Tuesday, which is Mars day and therefore much more suited for a beginning.
• I don’t do mornings. A lot of my friends will joke it’s because I’m sleeping and sometimes that is still true. Mostly, though, I need several hours with myself (and Spot, because he wants attention and needs stuff???) before I let anyone in. I ignore messages and try not to check things like emails or social media.
• Grief week. This one’s older than five years. My grandpa died on 15 February 2015. Since then, I have taken the week this date falls into off. My whole core family is dead but this one has hit me hardest and I need that week. I have had one year where I didn’t take it off. Well. I had to call in sick. Go figure.
• One week off per month. This one is fairly new and has been incredibly hard to enforce. Because there is always something, always someone that requires attention. And that is a problem because I’d also like to stay offline, away from screens with my phone off. Since I want it to be between the new and full moons of the month, it also often falls into a time where the funds are running low. So it’s a dance between really needing that time off and also needing to eat and therefore to be online and sell shit. Because, again, even with *all that money* from benefits, my bills aren’t fully paid and I don’t have a full month’s worth of food. So I need to bring in more money. So I spend a lot of that one week worrying and trying to decide whether or not I should be selling shit instead. Well, as it is part of this list, it has now become my non-negotiable and we’re running with it.
• No readings or calls before 2 pm. Except in very rare cases. At least not the ones I am doing, where I am the spaceholder. I shine after 2 pm. Before that, you usually don’t get the best of me. And after 7 pm? Meh. Occasionally, sure, for a circle or something. But as a rule? No, thank you. (Yes, if you’ve had your eyes and ears open, you’ve seen there’ll be Rooting, which will have the calls at 11 am and that is a deliberate choice a few times a month and comes with all the preparation, so you DO get the best of me at that time. Get on the waitlist here.)
• Morning pages. To make it abundantly clear: I hate The Artist’s Way with a fucking passion. Apart from the religious talk, the PRIVILEGE this woman operates from and expects everyone to have and the BLATANT FATPHOBIA in every fucking chapter have very much ruined the experience for me. I’ve also always journaled and was introduced to morning pages during a talk by Jessica Huie at an event in 2019. I have done them ever since. If I don’t journal in the morning, my mental health tanks. If you’re looking for advice in this post, this is it: Find the ONE thing that makes your mental health better and do it in the morning. Life changing shit. Could be that cup of coffee while you’re staring at the wall; it doesn’t have to be big.
• Breakfast and morning ritual whatever the time. This has made a tremendous difference to my wellbeing. I don’t always feel good when I’m doing it, especially when it is at 4 pm, but I feel infinitely worse when I don’t do it. I don’t care if this is my autism, my disabilities or something else entirely. I will adhere to my morning ritual no matter the time of day. Whenever I get up, that is my morning. This has been 3 am, 5 am, 8 am, 10 am, 12 pm, 4 pm…heck, even 6 pm when my rhythm is all the way upside down.
• Thursdays are contemplation days; no calls, no readings. This is sacred in my calendar. Thursdays are permanently blocked in my booking tool. I use them for any creative endeavours, sometimes for business or life admin, for staring at the wall, for anything that will give me room to experience NEW on all the other days of the week and be my best when I am IN my business.

While all of that is privilege because I have the time and space to do it thanks to benefits and the secure housing they give me, it is absolutely necessary to manage my life under the circumstances I am in. Allow it to give you a starting point of what is possible if we lived lives not centred around capitalism. This is possible. This and much more. A much better life, one much more in tune with nature, is possible.

What about the outside world?

The outside world can go do one, but is very much still a huge influence in my life. I get overstimulated in supermarkets at the weekend – the irony as I kept selling the UK when I moved as one of the places where you can just go buy groceries on the day, every day – and avoid them at all costs. Even more so should there be a FULL DAY of closure, like it happens 2-3 times a year. Living next to a stadium, match day fucks with my energy big time, too, no matter how much I shield myself and my house.

Weekends are weird in general; as are rush hour and the school run. There’s something about too many people running around frantically that I can no longer tolerate. Move to London, they said… And the LANDSCAPERS. Ugh. They should be forbidden. I have been going on about them everywhere for way too long, so I won’t go into details here. But the NOISE alone??? Ugh. Oh and people who ring the bell or knock on the door unannounced. No, thank you. No, not even the postie and he KNOWS that, so he doesn’t even try anymore. He hides the parcel and wanders off. Very much appreciated. Can you believe that nobody in my childhood ever thought, oh, she may be autistic?! One day I’ll write about all of that. Oh and school holidays. The worst.

Monday, though? (Except Bank Holiday Mondays… 😤) Monday is the most beautiful day now. Once the first rush is gone, the day is just full of possibilities. It is quiet, it is expansive and nobody perceives me until the evening, if at all. Glorious. So, the outside world and its rules are very much relevant in my life but I try my best to shut them out and the more I practise, the better I get at it. Funny how that works.

How do you actually make it happen?

How do I then make not working the default? Well, if you look through everything I have described, most of my time is for me. For my life. Not for work. Three days of weekend, three days of work that involves other people and one day for the liminal space in between that could go either way or a more magical third way that could lead me all the way into the astral plane. Most of my time spent on this Earth, I spend not working. How often, while reading this post, have you thought WOW SHE IS JUST LAZY? Don’t worry, we all have that thought; in many variations. It’s okay. Just make sure you catch it every time. It’s a good measure of how indoctrinated by capitalism, the patriarchy and white supremacy you are. How much work we still have to do.

Mindset, mindset, mindset

Nope, that’s not it. Whilst I think our collective mindset has to change and it will only do that if we change our individual mindsets, I think there is one tool that is much more powerful than that: Practice. Had you fooled there for a second, didn’t I? 😏 They say practice makes perfect, but I wouldn’t aim for perfection. I would aim for that elusive one step at a time. And the same step is going to be very uncomfortable again and again and again. And again. For good measure. You may feel like you’re losing your mind and want to give up. You may beat yourself up because you’re “not doing it right”, because it “doesn’t work”. What can I say? It’s a long road. Running hasn’t got us there, so now it’s time to walk; very, very slowly.

Yet I think it is worth it. It is worth practising to not work, not do ANY work; yep, that includes chores at home and caring responsibilities. I know there are people who are exceptions to this and I’m making it my mission to be part of the solution, but generally: You will have at least one day off. That is where you practise. That may just look like sleep and that is super valid. You cannot do this wrong. Unless you pick up work during your non-work time, in which case you’re doing it a little bit wrong but it is all still part of the process.

Start really fucking small

The first step to not working may actually be resting. Truly resting. When you’ve been ill and need another day (or several) once the worst of it is over, that is not resting. That is recovering. We HAVE TO learn this, we have to feel the truth of it in our bodies again. Recovery is not rest.

So, to start off, aim for one minute on one day. Seriously. Too long? Make it 30 seconds. Once you have successfully rested for this amount of time, try doing it every day for a week. Take it day by day. I cannot state enough how serious I am. A week worked? Fantastic. Make it two weeks, a month. A whole month of a minute a day? Glorious. Make it two minutes from then on. Keep accumulating the minutes. Soon, you will see that you’re carving out more than that.

The main obstacle with this exercise is that you will have A LOT OF resistance for it. It may even hurt physically. Think restless legs, thinking this is not enough time to have an effect – especially as your mind is racing, wanting to just do this one tiny thing quickly and THEN you can do it and before you know it the day is over. Yeah, I’ve been there. And I am there.

Now there are many forms of rest and it doesn’t mean that you have to just sit there and do nothing. If you want to look into the seven different types of rest and are up for a low-cost seven days of rest challenge, I can highly recommend Nikki from Breathing Mindful Coaching. [SHE NO LONGER DOES THIS.] The challenge is £7 and self paced, you can get it right here. I’m not affiliated, just a fan. You’re welcome.

Stop multitasking

There, I said it. Stop. Multitasking. We weren’t made for that shit. And I’m not talking about the things that HAVE TO be done at the same time, as I know a lot of parenting entails, okay? Do not come for me. I know. I’m talking about working on two things at the same time. Trying to do two hobbies at the same time. Do you still have those? Hobbies? Do we still know what that means? Anyway.

Sure, my fellow neurodivergent witches may crawl up the wall if there isn’t something else going on in the background or if you’re not switching tasks every so often while you’re ticking off those pesky to do list items. That may be essential for your brain. That’s stimulating your brain enough, so it can focus on the task at hand that needs fucking doing NOW. If you know, you know and all that.

But the multitasking. The two or three or more tasks at the same time; that has to stop. I promise you, it fucks up all of those tasks. Those tasks will either not get done in the timeframe they need to get done in or the results will be a bit shit. Because there is no way you can pay attention to the details you need to pay attention to when you’re doing all these things at once. If you HAVE TO switch back and forth for some reason, TAKE A BREAK. Make it a few minutes. Get up. Go to the loo, get a coffee (or whatever else you’re drinking), step outside. Break the pattern. This is the important bit.

Because if you’re anything like me, you’re already in fuck off mode. Tell me what to do and I’ll do the opposite and take pictures. And that’s fine. But PLEASE break the pattern of what you’ve been doing. Stop going through the motions automatically and become aware of them. That’s the first step to stopping the vicious cycle.

Reclaim your life

Okay, now we’re getting into the toxic spirituality space, Patricia, please stop… I hear you. Please hear me out.

I strongly believe that confidence is not a talent, it’s a muscle. We are born with confidence and then the conditioning we receive determines whether this muscle thrives and grows stronger or dies. For a whole lot of us, it died. Or bloody well almost did. But the fun thing about this is: The muscle is not actually dead, it is just massively atrophied. So, if we’re very fucking patient and keep using the muscle, keep flexing it, it grows again and becomes stronger. Until it becomes so strong you no longer give a fuck about what other people think.

What does confidence have to do with not working???

When you no longer care about what other people think, guess what else is completely irrelevant to you? Societal standards. I tend to attract the misfits – like myself – so you may have had to operate outside of those your whole life anyway. But how often do we still secretly hope to belong? Not even because we actually want to belong but because it would make life just SO. MUCH. EASIER!

So the more you practise not working or resting (or both), the more you practise enjoying life outside of work, the more comfortable you become with it. The more CONFIDENT you become. The freer you become of society’s standards and people’s opinions. The less shame and guilt you feel. The easier it all becomes. You can feel afraid AND do the thing. Do a tiny bit of the thing and then a bigger bit and before you know it, you’re doing the full actual thing.

We can take those first steps shaking and with raging minds. We can deal with discomfort. We can build that confidence. And when you have built that confidence, when your life feels fuller and fuller, you will want to work less and less. Make your actual life the default and not working.

But WHY?!

Well, if we make not working the default, if we centre our lives, we start centring our communities again. That’s the ultimate goal here. We want a better world. For ourselves and for the generations to come because otherwise, what’s the fucking point? When we centre our communities, we become a confident collective, knowing our power. And our collective power is strong. We are more in numbers than the “ruling” classes. They only have power because we give it to them while they keep making our lives more miserable, selling us more lies. We can take that power back.

So consider your first minute of not working (or resting, if that’s where you need to start) an act of defiance, of rebellion. That’s what I have been doing and I’ve been gradually getting better at it, building more confidence. You and me, we are either an active part of the revolution or a bystander. The latter strengthens Empire and that will be our end. And if you’re an active part of upholding the systems, well, I don’t know how you even got here!

Let’s do this together

I’ve got something for you to bring you guidance and accountability on this journey. I’m starting a membership called Rooting and it is all about building that confidence by doing the things, doing the work. Locally, in our communities, and together online. You can sign up to the waitlist now and get all the information once it’s out. I would love to have you on board. Let’s root for each other and our future together.

Stay magnificent. Stay witchy.