Pressure Makes Diamonds

Custom diamond ring by JILLERY., 2023.

Every so often, usually every other year: my dear mother brings up my approach to life as a baby, toddler, and youngling. “Your mind always kept going and going. It never stopped.”

And then her (brutal) punchline: “It still hasn’t. Calm that brain of yours down!”

I bring this up as context to the point I want to make about this last day of my all-too-brief self-care week.

Over the last 6 months, I repeatedly experienced two existential - fun with physics! - “inelastic collision” incidents: the personal colliding with “nothing personal” and the professional colliding with “nothing professional.” Yes, repeatedly. Exhausting.

I prefer specificity with a strong distaste for vagueness. But to protect my privacy and others’, I won’t divulge details of those deeply difficult incidents. Those who know know. But when the previous to most recent incident had finally appeared to pass, clarity started to emerge. One of my first realizations: call a time-out and get off the battlefield.

Rest. Recuperate. Work out. Read a book. Watch movies. Be lazy.

I don’t know about you, but all that still sounds like productivity to me. That bothers me.

I did all those except read a book (unhappy about that). I soft-launched this publication (finally). I corresponded. I socialized. And yet…

See? More productive thinking!

I now realize an uncomfortable duality: the pressure to rest versus the pressure to be productive. I’m okay at resting. I’m terrible at feeling unproductive. Or Catholic guilt versus Protestant guilt — so double the guilt.

An 18-year old college cashier and I were talking at Publix a few weeks ago. He and I were talking about the challenges one faces in youth versus the challenges one faces as an adult. He repeated a maxim I heard long ago but which he reminded me right on time: “Pressure makes diamonds.”

I could have used another week.