Haunted By Clive

How to stop work worries invading family life

"And once the phone’s gone, all the thoughts show up... which is uncomfortable but kind of the point." — The Daily Dad Reset

A holiday a couple of years ago. Me and the family were at a theme park. We were having a great time.

And then I got a call about work.

It was day six of the holiday - or day two if you discount the four days it took for my mind to recognise I was on holiday - so when the call came it was as if from another world. And it was a shock. In seconds I switched from feeling wonderful to feeling intensely stressed.

But here’s the really strange thing… When the call ended, I didn’t rejoin my family.

I stayed on my phone… and instinctively refreshed a news app.

Unusually, I then noticed what I was doing. It was the first time I realised that I often scrolled on the phone because I had negative feelings that I wanted to go away.

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THE “WHY DID I SAY THAT?” AVALANCHE

And now of course, if I have negative feelings on the commute, picking up the phone isn’t an option. The high vis Phone Free Commute idiot commitment vest has seen to that. And so each evening, on the way home from work, I’m being hit hard by a tidal wave of worry.

If you try setting aside your phone for a few minutes, you’ll know what I mean.

As soon as you put your phone away, you start replaying in your head the meeting you had with an external client. (Let’s call him Clive). Why oh why did I say that to Clive? Clive already thinks I am weak and now I have played into Clive’s hands. As you grapple with the enormity of evidence that Clive doesn’t rate you, it feels acutely horrible. You would do anything to be free of the feelings of inadequacy - and the fear of Clive.

Then you hear that evil voice… I can make these feelings go away. Look, Master. Look. This funny man is going to skid on ice and then stop on a spot. What will happen to him? It will be funny, Master. Clive will be a distant memory in the face of this hilarious meme.

The voice of course, belongs to that wily whispering Evil Advisor. And it feels like I am training my mind to hear it more clearly than ever.

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FEELINGS GOTTA BE FELT

There’s a saying in the meditation world - what you resist persists. That if you have a negative thought, the job is to accept it and acknowledge it. We can’t endlessly distract ourselves from it, because it’ll just come back with a vengeance.

We have become used to this idea with profound emotions like grief. We know that denial is bad.

For me, it seems to be true for the most embarrassingly trivial work worries.

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AN EVENING WITH CLIVE

Let’s say I have a tough day at work.

I have said something really stupid to Clive. Then I followed up with an email, but because I used copy and paste from notes on my phone, weird formatting errors have been introduced. The third paragraph is a different size to the others.

Right now, I imagine, Clive is combining the evidence of my weakness with the clear evidence I can’t write an email, and devoting his whole evening to HATING me.

But let’s say in this case that I get to fiddle with my phone the whole way home to keep these thoughts out of my head.

It’s effective, and seems harmless enough. Those memes are really funny, I have put more anchovies in the Sainsbury’s basket and am totally up to date on many, many apps. When I’m walking and I can’t easily look at a screen, I fill the silence with a podcast, because the phone offers 24/7 distraction in all circumstances.

Then I am home. I dutifully put my phone away in its allotted place and I offer my family the greatest gift of all - my company. Lucky them.

But these people, love them as I do, are not as stimulating as my phone. So my mind gets a bit of space for the first time. And it desperately needs to come back to assessing whether Clive hates me.

I’m a great dad. So I might be setting up to play a board game with the kids, one of those ones where it’s really just another version of Exploding Kittens and we have paid £30 for a deck of cards.

But all the time I do it, OOF Clive hates me! OOF No he doesn’t! OOF what if I email Clive about this, what would I say? I can’t think clearly, the stupid kids are still here. Stupid kids stopping me think clearly. And they are no help with the email.

I consider messaging a friend: “If I provide you with all this evidence, can you tell me if Clive hates me?” But phones aren’t polite in the evening.

Later, my wife might be talking about garden centres and then BAM out of nowhere I start up: “So I sent this email. Do you think Clive hates me?”

Later everyone goes to bed, I get time that is truly mine. A rare gift in our busy lives.

So I fiddle on the phone for a bit.

And then I go to bed. And in the silence of the night, the ghosts return. Soon I pass out, the follow up email to Clive still drafting itself in my head.

The next day begins. In any free moment there’s always something to distract me. The worries stack up day after day. They pour into Friday evening, and leech into the weekend. When I finally do take a holiday, it’s like I am under siege from months of Clive ghosts that have been patiently queueing up to haunt me.

It takes four days for them all to pass through me.

And then soon enough I get a call about work in the middle of a theme park.

I reach for my phone and the cycle begins again.

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THE FIRST WIN: THE EVENING COMMUTE

That’s the way it feels to me anyway.

I’ve spent 18 months learning how to deal with these worries through meditation.

And going phone free on the commute how has allowed me to apply these techniques. As a result, my evening feels fresher, and more like life rather than a respite between other things.

It does mean that the evening commute is more painful, sitting with inevitable negative thoughts. But let’s face it, the commute always sucks no matter what we do.

May as well use it.

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This is part a series of articles following 1,000 hours of silence on the commute - here’s the embarrassing story of how it all began.

If you know someone who’s tired of their phone use (or if you know someone whose phone use you are tired of) please consider sharing with them.

[Image - Photo by Timo Masri on Unsplash]