Not Working
I just got back from San Antonio for the weekend. It was great for my mind to visit with my family and just exist with myself. I came to terms with a few things in response to my previous posting about my mind and ongoing mindset endeavors.
One big thing is the idea of social lag. This is the method of becoming comfortable with your circle of friends and family over the years such that their expectations and perspectives of you actually cause you to build up a directed inertia in life. This inertia contains your daily life, habits, and even goes further into your goals and expected milestones. Thinking back, when I was able to go off for the summer, this social lag quickly disintegrated since I was 1500 miles away from the effects of my circle. This and other factors allowed for me to completely switch into a different and exciting quadrant of living. One where tasks that are not so urgent but are dearly important became my everyday life – my life. Activities like improving my writing, posting to this blog, meeting new people, progressing my state of mind, furthering my knowledge of my field, and so on. After scrutinizing my daily routines and activities of this summer vs. right now, I clearly saw where I needed to jump back into these pleasurable and meaningful activities, and just let the mundane tasks of daily life get done on their own. And they will – and they did.
So, this is a harsh simplification of the important concepts that I felt were integral in winning back this day-to-day satisfaction. What does it actually mean? Well, on Friday morning I woke up, and instead of checking and replying to emails about school and business or filling out more forms dealing with a new semester, I just started doing some fire dynamics problems on my chalkboard and writing out some creative words for another purpose. I spent all morning doing this and was gleefully lost in time and thought as I finally just sat down and did what I liked, regardless of the implications of “things” and “tasks” waiting for me to do them.
And you know what? The other tasks and forms and emails got done anyway. Not a problem. They fit right in between the small breaks of the bigger things in life. And I departed the morning with a feeling of satisfaction like I actually did something. This can be contrasted with a morning in which I would have monotonically performed only these tasks, and they would have pointlessly and inevitably found a way to fill up all of my time. This is no way to live – day in and day out.
This is all I want. This experience of satisfaction, providing value, and freedom from looming pointless tasks. Sounds simple? Look around. Is that what you see? Pleasurable activities and an appreciation for day-to-day life? Or just plain work?
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