When I was in high school, I used the Weird Al song "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead" as my personal theme song. I think the most polite description of me at that time is "intense". In college, I lost some intensity and may have relaxed a bit, but I also experienced at least one semester of clinical depression. To me, it felt like a complete lack of hope and sapped my will to go on.
I guess it shouldn't have surprised me that feeling so deeply would cut both ways: extreme joy and extreme despair are two sides of the same coin, at least for me. Since then, I've evened out a bit, reduced the highs and the lows, mostly staying within a reasonable middle ground.
For me, mood and activity go hand in hand. When I'm in a good mood, I have tons of projects I can't wait to work on and everything is exciting and interesting. When I'm in a bad mood, it's a struggle to keep up with the most basic tasks and I become apathetic. As I experience it, apathy is a stone's throw from hopelessness, so it's a frightening feeling.
After college, I explored Buddhism for a while. It seemed to resonate with me on a lot of levels. One of the comments I saw around that time was, "don't do something, just sit there." I thought that was clever until Willie and I went camping. After the third time I got up to poke the fire, Willie said, "you have a hard time sitting still, don't you?" I thought he was kidding, because we had been sitting and watching the fire for at least an hour, doing nothing else.
Or, maybe it only felt like an hour.
Since then, I've observed my own inability to sit still. This is most obvious when I'm in a bad mood. When I have a project to consume my energy, I don't feel like sitting still because I want to work on the project. When I'm in a bad mood, I worry and that seems to be my project. Those who know me might say that I worry even when I'm in a good mood, but it feels far more intense when I have nothing else to focus on.
The last month has been somewhat stressful and the last week especially so. This morning I was thinking about all the projects I have around the house, from home repair, to levelling my World of Warcraft characters, to chores, to crafts, and thinking that I really needed to hone my projects down to a smaller set, so I can focus on them. Now, I'm starting to wonder if I let go of my projects exactly when I needed them most: as something to engage me so I don't worry.
If I could approach relaxation with the same intensity that I approach other projects, I might be on to something.