I became exhausted by my own improving.

Endless making of effort.
I needed to pull the plug entirely at the end of that journey.

All I thought of was efficiency: how much more I could do in the smallest amount of time. 

I felt very responsible and pushed myself to the absolute limit to overcome it. But the crashing-out consequence was also epic.

Growing up, I believed one MUST make an effort. Making effort is a good thing. When I see someone who is achieving what they set out to do – by making effort – and accomplishing something measurable, I either feel motivated to do the same or feel bad, as I am not doing the same. Lately, the latter feeling is more prominent.

I feel guilty if I am not making effort. Being lazy is a sin. At least, that’s what I instantly think.

There is a philosopher called Antonia Pont who writes about practising — drawing on Deleuze's Difference and Repetition to give it a precise language — not practice as in rehearsal, not practice as in getting better at something, but practising as a particular way of being in time. A mode of doing that is different from habit, different from performance, different from self-improvement.

She has a chapter called "Relaxation: That Unnatural Effort".

Relaxation as effort. Unnatural effort. I had to sit with that for a while.

Because the idea is this: that we are so trained toward spontaneous exertion — toward pushing, producing, improving, achieving — that the act of easing off requires active intention. It does not come naturally. We have to learn it. It is, paradoxically, work.

Ease is not the absence of effort. 

Our culture has almost no language for it, because the language we have is entirely organised around output, progress, and results.

When you stop trying to arrive and simply allow the repetition itself to do something to you – that, Pont called ‘practice’.

Now I quit my job and no longer sustain the effort of constantly improving. I cannot do it anymore. And I met Antonia Pont's idea of making effort of not making effort.

silent atelier. was born from that.

It is a persistent sense that there must be another way to spend a life.

I have a message for those who resonate with me. Let’s create something slower, something deeper, something imperfect, something honest and human.

I am still finding out what that way looks like. You are welcome to join my journey of discovery.

— Shee