thinking and doing
I think that my life is divided into two complementary facets - the contemplative lifestyle and the active lifestyle (stealing terms from dante). Right now I am so busy going going going places that even when I have the time to write about it it doesn't feel right to do so. I have seen an astonishing number of new amazing things in my 3 days in manila and my causeway tournament experience and my 8 days in laos that I have no idea how to categorize them yet. writing is hard. maybe I will write about all of them eventually. the most important to me is that I feel wholly in the moment as I experience them. in that sense the trip has been a success. I have not spent much time thinking about the rest of life. in fact this is maybe the first time I have thought about real life outside the trip in weeks. attempting to survive 10 games a day of scrabble is not conducive to this. nor is being in a place that I may never visit again.
the thing is that for all that I think of myself as a quiet calm patient thoughtful human being I have been having trouble fitting into that role in life in berkeley. in a place where I have trouble imagining how things could be much better I find myself cyclically regressing to unhappiness. most nights here I have been so tired that I fall into sound dreamless sleep for many hours but tonight for whatever reason I find myself musing about things. especially life in china. I had forgotten that I spent a lot of months there being solitary and maybe not even all that happy. I think I am getting by in berkeley now because I do many things. more than when I first got here. but I need to find a space of doing nothing where I feel happy. I don't know if I've achieved that yet.
in any case the trip is amazing. I am going to try to go to sleep again now. hopefully I will say insightful things eventually.
the thing is that for all that I think of myself as a quiet calm patient thoughtful human being I have been having trouble fitting into that role in life in berkeley. in a place where I have trouble imagining how things could be much better I find myself cyclically regressing to unhappiness. most nights here I have been so tired that I fall into sound dreamless sleep for many hours but tonight for whatever reason I find myself musing about things. especially life in china. I had forgotten that I spent a lot of months there being solitary and maybe not even all that happy. I think I am getting by in berkeley now because I do many things. more than when I first got here. but I need to find a space of doing nothing where I feel happy. I don't know if I've achieved that yet.
in any case the trip is amazing. I am going to try to go to sleep again now. hopefully I will say insightful things eventually.