A Rough Idea: Low-energy ways to build a village in slow winter months
Building a better future without 'hustling.'
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I’ve been experiencing something called “functional freeze” for the first two weeks of the year. It’s a mental paralysis, an inability to start tasks. I get bored of my Netflix show, my Instagram feed, but I can’t stop because the notion of switching to something else seems like a colossal task.
“This is the moment to get ahead with some forward planning,” I say each morning, to nobody, and then proceed to not do that. Everyone has a hot take on Venezuela and ICE and Iran and I’m in bed. I should be reacting, resharing, redoing the exact same exhausting ways of working as previous years until I and everyone else feel satisfied that we are stressed enough, busy enough, tired enough to feel relevant.
Google searches tells me this lethargy is probably because of my ADHD. It’s executive dysfunction, a struggle to start things even when we really really want to.
Climate content creators on social media tell me it’s because we’re pushing against the earth’s natural rhythms of rest and activity. Cold dark frozen winters are not the moment to leap into action. It’s the night season. You don’t need to have ADHD to struggle to hustle when the world itself is asleep.
But even in this lethargic state, I have found myself collecting small actions to propel myself closer to building a village. Creating networks that reject the influence of a few rich billionaires.
Here’s a few low-energy ways to have a positive impact and start building a network in these slow dark months (and the majority can be done from bed):
