A Conversation with My Crocodile

After my afternoon nap, I woke up feeling numb. My body was stiff, my legs were heavy, and something inside my head crackled quietly.

"Wake up and get moving. Time's slipping away," I told myself. But the voice came from somewhere far away, like a whisper carried by a light breeze. I stretched my back, reached my arms above my head and rolled onto my side.

"Leave me alone," I muttered.

At that very moment, a tiny sting on my shin woke me properly.

"A mosquito? How on earth? I'm under the blanket."

Then my shoulder blade started itching. I rolled over and tried to scratch it. I had barely reached the spot when another problem announced itself.

Suddenly I desperately needed the toilet.

"Well, that's impressive," I muttered. "From nothing to an emergency in two seconds. Have I caught a cold in my bladder?"

Afterwards I walked back towards my desk. The screen was waiting.

"I wonder if anything new has happened."

I sat down and stared at the monitor. The mouse wheel kept turning while my eyes wandered over the endless little squares on the screen without seeing any of them.

Eventually I stopped scrolling and looked out of the window.

"This is pointless," I said to myself. "I've got so much work to do, and here I am staring at useless news. I've had enough."

A train rolled through my mind. Every wagon carried another urgent task. Plant the flowers. Trim the hedge. Replace the line in the grass trimmer. Repair the front wheel of the bicycle. Finish organising the shelves. Finish editing the photographs.

I sat completely still, wondering which one I should tackle first. Whichever wagon I looked at, my stomach tightened. This had been happening for several days.

I realised that everything had become too much. I'd lost my motivation.

"What am I supposed to do to get moving?" I asked myself.

"Go onto the balcony and smoke a cigarette," a quiet voice suggested. "You'll figure out what's most important while you're there."

I walked outside, lit a cigarette and asked: "Who are you that's whispering all these things to me?"

There was no answer.

I sat quietly in the shade, staring at the ground in front of me. My head felt heavy. My legs felt weak. Even looking across the valley somehow felt exhausting. The afternoon light was almost painfully bright.

The cigarette slowly burned away. As I stood up and headed for the stairs, the quiet voice spoke again.

"You're tired. The work you're planning is difficult... but not very important. Go back to the computer and create something instead."

"Who are you?" I asked again.

This time I got an answer.

"I am your safety system."

"And what exactly do you do?"

"I make sure your body stays safe whenever something might go wrong."

"So... you're my Crocodile."

"I suppose I am."

"Then explain something to me."

"You've just told me I've got a mountain of unfinished work. Why are you sending me to sit in front of a screen?"

"Because your body doesn't feel well."

"And how exactly will sitting there doing nothing useful make things better?"

"Your body is tired. It needs rest."

"Fine. Then I'll go back to bed."

"No."

"But you just said I need rest."

"You do."

"So I'll sleep."

"No. You've slept enough. Sit at the computer and get something done. That's useful work."

I sat down and tried to concentrate. Nothing happened.

"You need to plant the flowers..."

The whisper returned.

"You have to trim the hedge. You still need to replace the line in the mower. And don't forget the front wheel on the bicycle."

That was enough.

"Are you making fun of me?" I almost shouted. "If you're sending me to work, at least give me enough motivation to get moving!"

"I already told you," the Crocodile answered calmly. "You need rest. But useful rest. You don't need heavy legs to scroll through a screen. You don't need a sore back either. You'll save the energy you'll need later for physical work."

I thought about that for a while.

"Am I completely out of motivation? Have I simply grown tired of jobs that never seem to end? Am I just lazy?"

The Crocodile didn't answer.

Then another thought quietly appeared.

"Or maybe I've simply lost my direction."

Lately my life had once again filled up with long-term goals whose finish line seemed miles away. The work remained. The results were almost invisible.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I had slipped back into that quiet, chronic stress. Tired because of anxiety. Every task looked too big. Everything felt boring before I had even started. Round and round I went.

"I need a better solution," I told the Crocodile. "I want to get moving again. I want to enjoy making progress instead of feeling fed up with everything."

"I have a solution."

"Oh?"

"Have a beer."

That thought got such a kick that even Ronaldo would have been jealous.

Alcohol had dragged me all the way to the bottom, and climbing back out had been one of the hardest things I'd ever done. And now this idiot was recommending exactly the same thing.

"It always solved this problem," the Crocodile repeated. "Your anxiety disappeared. You could keep working, even when you couldn't cope anymore while sober."

"You're not helping me at all," I said. "Your instructions do far more harm than good. Maybe your safety system protected me when I was a child. Now it only chases me around and fills my head with confusion."

"Those are the instructions I have," the Crocodile replied quietly. "If you want different ones, you'll have to show me they work. You can't convince me with words alone."

He was right.

Ever since childhood I'd been taught responsibility, precision and perfection. And now I was supposed to leave everything in the middle of my busiest period and wander into the forest to listen to birds.

It doesn't work like that. So what now?

I gave myself a few quiet hours to think.

I knew my body was capable. The obstacles were somewhere inside my head. Curiosity had usually pulled me forward. Sometimes habit. Sometimes determination.

But only curiosity had ever made me genuinely happy.

Working out of habit or stubbornness was poor fuel. Eventually it turned into nothing more than survival. And slowly it exhausted me.

"So tell me something," I asked. "Why have I grown tired of the things I used to love? There are mushrooms growing in the forest, and I don't even feel like going."

"The chances of finding any are small," the Crocodile answered. "Waste of energy."

"And how do you know that? What if I come back with a full basket?"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous. Mushrooms in the middle of June? The only people who find baskets full of mushrooms now are those wandering around the hills all day and then posting last autumn's harvest on Facebook."

"What about my photographs? I'd really like to finish editing them and finally organise the albums."

"You've been working on them for a month. You're only a third of the way through."

"Even I'm bored."

"You can't keep scrubbing the same frying pan with the same cloth every single day. Come up with something new."

"Oh, be quiet," I sighed. "You've got an argument against everything. You want to judge everything by results and success, as if life were a competition for the most beautiful coffin."

The Crocodile mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like,

"That's how you taught me," and fell silent.

I watched a moth moving from one geranium flower to another, quietly drinking nectar.

Suddenly I realised my thoughts had disappeared. My eyes wandered across the valley and another thought appeared.

"It would be a perfect day for a swim in the Kolpa."

Then it struck me.

I'd been doing something rather foolish. I'd been trying to find motivation for something I didn't actually want to do.

My Crocodile had almost fooled me. He had shown me something that looked like depression simply to push me back to work.

Perhaps I can count today as a small victory. For the first time, I saw through his trick before I followed it.