I should get a job

because I'm thinking too much

A couple of days ago, a good friend of mine told me that I should get a job.

“You’ve got too much time on your hands to think” she said.

What an interesting comment: too much time to think.

It got me thinking.

And I wanted to break it down, just to make sure I got it right.

First of all, let us ask: when is it too much? where’s the threshold? When can my friend – or anyone else, for that matter – notice that I’ve reached the critical point of toomuchthinkingness, and that passed that stage … something might switch.

Imagine walking down the street and everyone would have a little counter – like the one that calculates your daily footsteps – but instead, it would be embedded right on your forehead indicating your level of toomuchthinkingness (color-coded for ease and convenience). And friends, we would be surprised! In places of the highest importance such as political institutions, banks or court rooms, people would be trying really hard to think but only small amount would appear on their forehead. The colour would hover somewhere between a dirty beige and a pale green, as if they were suffering from liver diseases. Meanwhile, unemployed, artists and sportsmen would display glowing foreheads like perfectly baked croissants.

Thinking scales are not always what you think.

The following question thus, can only be: what actually happens when one reaches that threshold? Maybe my friend is afraid that by thinking too much, I may go crazy. I have heard this hypothesis before. The thing is, you see, I already know I am crazy.

Thinking is precisely what helps me stay sane!

Thirdly, and this will be my last question (to fill the time that I’ve got), we do need to think about the idea of working itself. Maybe my friend believes, like some other people before her including Kierkegaard and Hitler, that Arbeit macht frei: Work makes us free. Hence, my third question: what does working really mean and what does it entail?

Some insist that work must be something awfully difficult or boring, or worse, both at the same time. While for me, working really means pleasure. And this is why I am so generously leaving this task to other people. Let them have the pleasure while I take care of thinking too much. To which you may reply with a facial expression showing me how responsible a grown-up you are: “Great Julia! But how will you sustain yourself?”
Well… right now, I am just trying as hard as I can to offer that pleasure to others, while asking myself questions to which I will never have answers.

That is my work.

Yet, I’m afraid that invoking “pleasure” alone won’t be sufficient for a practical mind like my friend who needs facts, proofs, results, outcomes. So I think I have found a way to soothe her anxiety about my future.

Here’s my plan:

Looking into my birth chart, not only my sun, but six of my planets are stationed in Capricorn. The star-system tells me that my soul demands connection to the earth, and when it’s not grounded enough, it can go in all sorts of directions. I have thus made the reasonable decision to be spending my winter in a farm, in the mountains, walking the talk. I’ve already had a Zoom call with the head farmer, and I proposed him the following: that I plant my thoughts in his soil.

He was dubious at first, but then I explained him how it would go.

“Look,” I said, “we don’t need much material, just a tiny patch of land where I can go whenever I need. Every time a nice thought comes to my mind, I’ll make a tiny hole with my little finger in the soil and plant it there. I will be discreet, clean, and careful not to disturb the existing ecosystem around me.”

Of course, different thoughts have different sizes, patterns, colors, and shapes. Some won’t sustain the cold, others will need a lot of watering, and some will grow in the blink of a night with very little maintenance. Over time, these thoughts, I believe, will take roots into ideas, concepts, and perhaps even some things I can’t even name yet. If I wanted to think about it even further, I’d say that what I’m planting isn’t the thoughts themselves but the emotions behind the thoughts: that inner feeling which gives the thought its contour and ultimate direction.

My friend whom I had the conversation with, happens to be a mother and I remember clearly the devotion she poured into cultivating her child, from natural birth, to breastfeeding to home schooling. She most definitely had borrowed from other people, who had planted those thoughts in the ground before her. She just had to pick up a few flowers and off she went.

Were these people also thinking too much ?

So maybe that’s what I’ll answer next time someone asks me about my work: I’m just trying to humbly improve the bouquet of thoughts that already exists in the world. Of course, I also have terrible ones crossing my mind sometimes: mediocre, petty, angry, mean, nasty, human thoughts. Eek. But those, I promised the head farmer, I won’t plant into his ground. Instead, if he agrees to light a little fire every evening for me, I’ll make sure to burn them all in it.

If my plan still feels too abstract for you, let me give you a very concrete example: “You should be doing more sport” I burn. “Congratulations for alchemizing your pain into love” I plant. “Your newsletter lacks coherence” I burn. “You’re being so authentically truthful” I plant. “You never finish anything entirely” I burn. “Everything is about to come together in its perfect timing” I plant. I am telling you: being a gardener of your own toomuchthinkingness, is an intense practice.

To all of you who have already started asking me what my plans are for the upcoming holidays, I finally feel relieved to answer:

I will be working.

Planting my emotions into the ground and watch them turn into flowers.

And believe me, it’s so amazing to work when you’ve got nothing to do!

Yours Truly,
Julia

Thank you for reading me. This Newsletter is free, but the capitalist ghost living inside of me (you can also call it an ashkenazi mother) insists that any effort deserves a reward. If you’ve got the means and the desire to support this adventure, I accept money too.