In a day and age where “stay safe” extends beyond its routine metaphorical use, and toilet paper is more coveted than the new Dior x Air Jordan 1s — its fair to say earth’s s*!t really hit the fan. And for some reason, out of this cacophony of fear, uncertainty and crippling boredom, there is an emerging consensus that rivals the tone deafness of black capitalism. Okay that may be a stretch, but there is certainly a disconnect between the theoretical concept of “free time” and the actual visceral response that ensues from indefinitely not knowing. The remedy for this shared anxiety cannot be starting (another) business, finishing the last twelve issues of Harvard Biz Review or scrubbing your G-Suite clean. And if any of those faux-productive advances are indeed the keys to our cosmic awakening — our regenesis from this quasi-Tabula Rasa — I just can’t. In fact, I won’t. Sorry start-up hoteps! I want no parts of the “working from home” hamster wheel.

Please do not misunderstand my slightly exaggerative lamentations — I love being a #GirlBoss and the creative dynamism and flexibility a founder x ceo career affords. I live for ushering nothings into lands of somethings and anothers. I crave the ingenious a-ha moments, and the infamous “IDK WTF IM DOING ANYMORES!!!” (yes, plural). Yet the glory of freelance work has always been the pause. While I am still learning to seize the whole spectrum of the entrepreneurial experience, I know a breather — whether initiated or unrequited — is never a bad thing. Really, its a God thing.

My pause looks like re-examining how I engage and have historically engaged with this notion of productivity. Conventional productivity does not always equate positively. Self-sabotage can look forcing yourself to create, architect, engineer, review, revisit or resurrect projects against the greater flow of divine synchronicity. Now if you’re like most self-employed folk, you still have clients and work that must be attended to. Do that in good health and with intention. But what I am attempting to illuminate here is for my overactive left brain folk. Whenever we emerge out of this quarantine, you don’t have to have the next emissionless submarine transit service ready to pitch. Sometimes you just need to make it out alive. And keeping with this mawkish metaphor, alive and above water.