(no subject)
It's been a trying year.
Trying in the way that the previous years working up North were and weren't.It has had me working the same kinds of hours, and filled me with some of the same sense of isolation. But it hasn't been as physically isolating, which makes me wonder what it is exactly that has me feeling this way.
I've been reflecting on this on and on for the past few months. I think that this is the confluence of a great many things and, as in any multivariable situation, it becomes very difficult to extricate the exact impact of each factor, or the relationship between them.
First of all, I feel more mature, ...more self-assured in who I am as a person, and have been fortunate enough to explore all kinds of interesting aspects of my Life. I'm a vegetarian and am no longer on FB in part due to questions I've been asked that came, I suppose, at the right time. Yes,getting off FB is worthy of mention. I'm saving all those poor server farm cycles that are forced to toil 24 hours a day so that you can see who's been batmaning recently. Shameful!!
But I also feel like I've gained some perspective on how I interact with the world around me, and I'm not necessarily happy with the lessons I've learned there. I feel like I've lost some of my internal drive and curiosity. I believe I've gained a better sense of temperance, and even a bit of consideration. I feel less... impulsive? Spontaneous? Jury's out
Second of all, I realize that I haven't done as much as I should've to deal with two of my greatest weaknesses: focus and memory. I think I've tried to deal with these as abstractions, without understanding what they really meant to me. Like the fact that stuffing my NewReader with all kinds of things ahs been really enjoyable, but once it gets stuffed so much that time can't be properly spent reflecting on the value of the articles I read, then it becomes nothing other than entertainment. Similarly, I think that one of the greatest tools I've ever had at my disposal was... my old LJ! It's given me the ability to go back and remember anew what I've done, and at least get an idea of why I did it. When you start feeling so disconnected from what you were, you need a bridge of sorts to access the thought process at a minimum. All the notebooks in the world won't allow me to avoid this simple point. And hence the reason for writing *this* post!
Third of all, I think that my time up North has encouraged me to change some of my values that have turned me into someone much more introverted. I think it partly encouraged me to distinguish between people as sources of information and debate and people as friends (a kind of perception of all people as utilities.) It also encouraged me to keep my thoughts to myself (combination of working strategically in a high-stress situation and being surrounded people that thought it was soooo fancy that I read books for fun. SRSLY.) I also think that my choice of reading during that period (including Nietzsche and Kierkegaard) got me focusing more on hoarding personal information as a means of exerting power (which is pretty off, thinking of it now, but not completely.) There's definitely something in Fear and Trembling that really set something off in my thought process.
Finally, I feel that the books, movies, discussions and debates I've partaken in have poorly prepared me for this particular transition in my Life. Through an emphasis on scientific/managerial nonfiction, fantasy and philosophy, I've gotten some great examples of insight, leadership and society. But the chilling absence of anything remotely close to a Bildungsroman has left me with no role models for coping with the onset of real maturity, and the kind of themes I think come with real, bona fide maturity. Coping with stagnation, negating egocentrism, understanding the value and importance of consistency, temperance, ... Not old-man stuff, but stuff that comes with the realization that the goal is no longer a perpetually short-term notion of self-augmentation or reinvention. Stuff that comes with acknowleding that I'n entering my middlegame (and not my midlife! Big difference!!!)
The single biggest component to overcoming these issues is something I've gotten worse at in the past few years: mindfulness. The deliberate reflection on where I am, what I am doing and why I am there. This blog, first and foremost will definitely help with that; a consequence of believing that a single person is incapable of satisfying our need for emotional or sexual attention is believing that a single person shouldn't be able to manage all of our emotional or reflective needs as well. Which I think is true! And no matter how much I love S (and I love her bigtime!), it's unfair to her to try and position her as the fulcrum of all of my personal reflections and commentaries.
A second step to returning to mindfulness is not taxing my attention as much, and pulling away from multi-tasking. I think I've gotten into the habit of trying to do as much as possible simultaneously and I think this has had an egregious effect on what I do, and how I do it. Another one of my shortcomings is my inability to multitask properly; I don't know if this holds for everyone (which would essentially mean the same thing as stating that mutitasking is bad! :P) but I know it holds for me. I need to stop thinking that watching Avatar episodes while chatting with S and doing work is a good idea. I think I really saw it as a way of cheating, that any activity takes a given amount of time, and that activities can therefore be conducted in parallel. But activities aren't taking time, often. They take "attention", which is a much more finite ressource!
A third step is being attentive to what I need, and what I can see myself doing and being. Ironically, I had originally written off this year as a year to tend to my wounds and refocus... It's taken me getting all worked up over my own inaction to actually get me to refocus like I had planned...
There are many things I want to do, but I think it's time to properly prioritize them, according to what I'm able to do, and what I'm looking to be in the short term.
Let's do it, bébé.