Freizeitstress: Leisure time stress

The clock is ticking...

My friend Emma gifted me this bumper sticker a few years ago. I love it so much that I can’t bring myself to stick it on anything, even though that’s its intended purpose. There has to be an untranslatable word for that.

Happy Friday! A while back, I read Matthew Dicks’s book, Storyworthy. In it, he suggests an exercise he calls Homework for Life. In a nutshell, it involves keeping a spreadsheet of “storyworthy” moments that happen in your life each day. The idea is that you give yourself a bank of ideas for stories or essays. But they’re also just fun to go back and read, which I did recently. It’s like having a time capsule of memories that I might have otherwise forgotten. For example, in July of 2022: “A Lyft diver picked me up from the airport in his car, which was covered in anime stickers (inside and out), blasting a techno remix of the Princess Peach song from the Super Mario movie. THE ENTIRE WAY HOME.” Is there a story here? I don’t know. But I’m glad I documented that bizarre moment, and I officially endorse Homework for Life.

"Freizeitstress" (German)

When my kid was a few months old, I was still getting used to the stress and sleeplessness of parenthood. One afternoon, my husband graciously took our child out for an hour so I could have a moment of solitude. When the door shut behind them, I felt something that I hadn’t felt in months…calm. 

And then I panicked. 

I texted a friend: “OMG I have forty-five minutes to myself. WHAT DO I DO?” Yoga? A documentary? A nap? The possibilities seemed endless, and TIME WAS RUNNING OUT. When they returned, I would have a slew of other tasks to complete. The pressure, my god, the pressure!

The German term “freizeitstress” captures this feeling.  It means "free time stress," and it sort of describes the pressure we feel to enjoy our free time, but it’s tricky word. As writer Olivia Walters put it,

“In English, this feeling is best translated to ‘restlessness’ or ‘cabin fever,’ but moving between languages reveals a curious phenomenon. Emotions are often untranslatable.

Another speaker describes it as being stressed in your free time because you’re preoccupied with the tasks on your to-do list. Freizeitstress seems to be one of those words that everyone might interpret slightly differently because, as Walters points out, emotions are often untranslatable. But it describes how I felt at that moment  — excited to have some free time, yet stressed at its fleeting nature.

Untranslatable words often point to ironies in our behavior. The irony here, of course, is that stress has a way of seeping into moments that shouldn’t be stressful at all. It lingers. And, in my case, trying to escape stress becomes yet another stressor. I guess we forget that with some things in life, the less you try to force it, the easier it comes.

My friend suggested making a cup of tea and writing in my journal, which is exactly what I needed that day. Just a small moment of joy. As the old saying goes, perfect is the enemy of good. 

From the archives

Homesick Ghazal, a poem I wrote about growing up in Houston that was published in The Pinch.

Share-worthy

• This great HBR piece on how to trust your gut. What I found particularly useful was the idea that we can mistake fear for intuition. “Fear has a pushing energy, as if you’re trying to force something, or selecting an option because you want to avoid a threat, rejection, or punishment…Intuition on the other hand has pulling energy, as if your choice is moving you toward your best interest, even if that means pursuing a risk or moving more slowly than others.” Hat tip to my friend and writing/creativity coach Krystie Yen.

• Rufus Wainwright singing Hallelujah. My husband and I played this song at our wedding eight years ago. These days, we so rarely get time to ourselves, but over the weekend we went to a Rufus Wainwright performance, and he encored with this song. It felt really special. It’s a stunning version of an already stunning song.

• This fascinating essay on The Dead World of Blippi. In it, journalist Nathan J. Robinson argues that the children’s show reinforces a culture of emptiness. Maybe my favorite line in the whole thing: “Love is important, and if you think that’s corny or cringe, you can f!ck right off.”

 — Kristin