The Art Of Hibernation

In point of fact, that is exactly what I have been doing for the past couple of weeks. At a certain point in your life, and I hope everybody gets there, you get to stick your head out the door, feel the rip of the cold winter wind,and the snow blowing into your face and just say to yourself…fuck this.

The world of hibernation has every bit as much potential as the real world, but without all the black ice and idiots haplessly trying to control a couple tons of steel glass and aluminum.

It’s warm and dry in the hibernation cave. Where you can make yourself a cup of coffee and gaze out at the winter chaos without a real care in the world until the storm is over.

Where you can cause trouble on the Internet, and plan your post- hibernation assault on the business world.

Where you can paint your masterpiece or write the great Canadian blog post. Where you can listen to your favourite podcast, and where you never have to look at a clock until it gets dark.

Don’t Hate Me For Hibernating

I know a lot of people are grumbling and thinking that this is nothing more than an exercise in complete decadence. But it’s really not.

It takes a great deal of discipline to hibernate constructively. Your days are planned out almost as carefully as if you were out there slaying dragons in the real world.

The only difference is the stress level, because hibernation comes with a lower heartbeat and a general feeling of well being most of the time.

Old Bugaboos Get Put To Sleep

And that is the key to truly opening up your mind and really getting down to the core of whatever is on it.

One of the things that has been on my mind lately has to do with the world and why it’s so fucked up.

Before I started hibernating, I was really angry about this. I was all about cussing out the greedy and the stupid and the ignorant and the racists and well, you name it. Pick a target. I had a poison dart blowing in that direction.

And since I am fairly high strung to begin with, all this self-manufactured angst was really just exacerbating that and causing me to lose sleep from not being able to actually shut down my brain at night. Anger will do that.

So the hibernation, for me, at least, is a form of therapy. It’s not about doing nothing. It’s about slowing down and taking your time making decisions about how you want to spend your time.

Sometimes, like everybody else, I don’t have a lot of control over that. But for the past couple of weeks and for the next couple to come, I have just done my best to let it all go. All the crap. All
the bullshit. All the self-generated anger at how fucked up everything seems to be. All the fantasies about being able eradicate it all and make the world a better place for it.

All that fuckin’ bullshit that was clogging up my brain.

There Is A Method Behind It All

And you know what? It actually works. It is starting to alter my world view and causing me to shift gears. It’s a slow process. But time is the ultimate elixir of change and the more I drink, the less pessimistic I become.

But more importantly, the more I drink of hibernation time, the more I realize that the anger and the angst and raging against the machine I have been doing are exactly the kinds of behaviours that all the people causing all this crap in my head were counting on.

Because then they could point at me and say…this fucker is out of his skull, so don’t pay any attention to him. He’s just another lunatic with an axe to grind.

And, so far, that is the single most important insight that has come about in this hibernation. Don’t play the game they want you to play. Don’t make it easy for them to write you off as a nutbar by screaming about too many nutbars in the world, despite the fact that it is a true thing.

The truth in this instance, will not set you free, and screaming it will only make you look like another screamer spewing sarcastic spittle into the ether.

So there you go. Hibernation for the sake of sanity.

But sooner or later, all good things must come to an end and I will have to stat dealing with the real world once again. But this time, I will be going at it with with a razor sharp stiletto and not the 24-inch chainsaw I formerly employed.

Will it work? Who knows. All you can really worry seriously about is your own mental health and well-being. If you can argue rationally as opposed to violently, you probably have a better chance of getting your points across.

As someone said recently….”I’m not doing what I do with the hope of changing the minds of people who disagree with me, so much as I am letting those who do agree with me know that they are not alone.”

I think most of us are agreed that the world has to change. But that’s not gonna happen overnight, because it took quite a while for things to get this messed up and the unmessing won’t also take a good deal of time.

So here I am in the hibernation cave. It’s starting to snow and the wind is picking up. Tomorrow there will be several hours of freezing rain and nobody wants to be out in that shit. So here I will stay until I have completely changed my oil and lowered the idling speed of my brain.

It’s all good…jim out,

He is a communication strategist, writer, art director, broadcast producer, prolific marketing & op/ed blogger & beBee Brand Ambassador.

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