Today, I Watched the Sun Change Colours in My Bedroom

All images and sounds by Crystal Dorval/White Poppy.

Today, I took a homeopathic pill of advice from Crystal Dorval, a Vancouver-based multimedia artist whom I primarily know as the ambient/psych sound-collagist White Poppy.

I often feel as though life is a race against time that I'm desperately losing. We're all bound to lose, but I mean trailing - languishing in the dust, even: there's too much music to listen to, too much work I have to do in order to get where I want to be, too much work in general; I don't make enough time for my important relationships or myself. I feel I should be proactive on my rare days off, as Dorval says: force myself to take advantage of the sun - force myself to see people. As time only seems to accelerate, why waste what little we have (left)?

Yet I can't seem to pull myself away from work even when, like today, I make a conscious decision to not think about it. I slept in, yes, and I did make great headway with a book I’m genuinely enjoying, but I still spent all morning writing and sending e-mails and punctuated my reading by scribbling notes in preparation for a book review. And currently, I'm disentangling my thoughts for this post.

I used to think going out and seeing people were the solutions to the innervating effects of isolation and boredom. But then, why did the Best Coast lyrics "And when I go out, I don't feel anything / I just keep on spending my money / One day, it will be gone / And then I'll have to write another song" ("Last Year") keep sticking out?

Dorval has taught me that yes, there is value in taking a day to yourself - to lounge about and do whatever you want, even if all you want to do is nothing. Like her, lounging around the apartment, not doing anything, usually makes me feel "lazy" and even guilty about wasting precious time. But everyone should give themselves permission to lounge and do nothing with their day. Try it just once, and maybe you too will realize that, as Crystal assures, "It's okay. in fact, it might be one of the most productive things you can do for your mental health."