(no subject)
I just spent the last two hours reading. Not doing Accounting, not studying Sociology, not working out, not being productive. I didn't brainstorm for art projects, review Statistics, format DP work, LJ or AIM anyone, sing, cook, do push-ups. I did not look toward the future with frightened eyes and pretend I could control it. I did not even answer my phone. Instead I just read... just read.
I realize I am going to pay for this later, but I really don't care. I feel so good. I feel so rich and well-off and reconnected and spoiled and glowing. I got to READ, guys! And for once it didn't occur at some gods-forsaken hour of the morning! This time it wasn't relegated to the few unwanted hours of the day when sleep-time can be sacrificed for book-time with minimal consequence, or to sporadic chapters between classes that leave me feeling hideously guilty afterwards. It was just blatant, brazen reading. Right in plain sight of all of the other responsibilities I could have lifted. Everybody else at Oakland did Homework, but I simply cuddled on the couch engrossed in Drawing Down the Moon.
Gods, but it was perfect.
Ashley read on the other side of the couch from me. Intrigued, amused, or impressed, I would frequently read small passages and quotes to her, and she would read small passages and quotes to me in turn from her class book. We determined that I am allegedly a pantheist and that Ashley, in my words, is a nontheist. We also agreed never to work in steel mills just because we didn't trust our beaus with the harlots there. But for the most part we were quiet, cuddled up in blankets and lost in our works.
Weifei came in at some point, set her laptop on the ottoman, and joined us in silence. We talked for a moment about oranges, but we soon forgot about our intentions to get up and get some. Then Anji came in and she was a little bit noisy initially, until she too into poli-sci reading and quiet note-taking.
At one point Anji's phone beeped and she had an entire conversation I somehow did not hear. I didn't realize I did not hear it until Ashley quietly teased her about it afterward. It occurred to me then how engrossed I was in the silence I had been seeking, and how good it felt to be able to get lost in a book that wasn't even fantasy or sci-fi. "I am reading," I thought to myself. "I am somewhere I always wanted to be." I glanced up at my housemates clustered together on the old red couch, each of them reading or working or studying with various levels of intensity, and smiled. I was very happy.
I probably would have read for only an hour and a half until Ashley went to bed. Her going to bed reminded me that I too needed to go to bed, especially because tomorrow is our hard-core work-out day (aerobics, belly-dancing, and potentially clubbing.) But I was so intent on just reading that I kept on reading for another half an hour, until finally I hit a good stopping point and realized I wanted to hit the sack.
But first I wanted to write about it here. I don't know why. I probably sound like a blathering idiot for valuing something like this so deeply. But really, I have been fighting off an increasingly bitter jealousy for months now, maybe even years. I'm not sure what it is about now that has made it so difficult to bear. I watch others read and eagerly discuss books, hear of a thousand interesting things I would absolutely love to read, and event get lent a number of titles that deeply interest me. But then... they collect dust. Books I buy for myself in rare moments of self-delusion lay unfinished but never make my to-do list. And I say, gods, I WANT to be learning, I desperately want to be studying things (particularly magic) at the moment... but I don't. I can never seem to make the time. How is it I can find time for so many things but never for the things I could I almost say I want the most? It frustrates me immensely.
I seek to change this behaviour pattern, but I was raised to be enormously productive. Hell, I'm your typical relentlessly-schooled professionally-bound American girl. I was taught efficiency and economy of resources in order that I might attain better ones, and I was taught to treat life as a series of benchmarks that must be accomplished if I am ever to move forard. Time is of the essence, and priority is always given to those things that foster efficiency, opportunity, and individual strengths, particularly when those things will one day generate money (but never time.) I KNOW it is irrational to believe that work is never finished if I can somehow remotely work ahead, and that it is unfair to forbid myself rest after projects because the next could in theory already be finished. But I do so in the hopes that in the future I will have even more time freed up from busting my ass now... much like I did last week and weekend. Suffered all week and was rewarded with an absolutely delightful weekend.
But this was a rare reward in the usual treadmill of dissappointments. I will not get ahead 90% of the time because there will always be more before me, and because my fluid standards for myself will automatically raise each time I climb over a recently-lifted bar. There is no rest in sight. There is no contentment or satisfaction.
And so I know I need to take stock of things, to slow down and devote more attention to the now. I feel I have made huge strides in this already (I take naps this quarter, squeeze fun in on the weekends, and hang out with friends on school-nights now and then...) but it is slowly becoming unravelled. Why? First of all, I am so determined to cherish and spend my free time well that the minute I get it I fill it with a thousand busy opportunities and events. I never just read, meditate, or even catnap for more than 30 minutes at a time. Secondly, the hobbies and habits I DO fill that time with have managed to become obligations. For example, I love aerobics, but not going is not an option to me now. I can't not go to PSA, not see my brother, not make sure to spend time with people who need or deserve it even when I have none myself. Even the people I hang out with are in danger of becoming a pattern... I find myself increasingly uneasy or malcontent when I am able to see some people regularly and then abruptly cannot do so as often, or on the flip side when I seem someone infrequently and suddenly they wish to do so much more often. It is unfair, but I find there are certain people I really do not want to hang out with lately, and others I really do want to hang out with (who do not seem to return these desires.) I have failed at expressing this to either side, though... which is perhaps for the better.
Basically, the gyst is this:
I can't make promises, but I want a million of them.
There is a lot of shifting ground in my life right now.
If you want some perspective of how different things are, I haven't even climbed, my most beloved hobby, ONCE this entire quarter, let alone taken the time to bitch about it here. Fuck, I haven't even gone to a single Mountaineers Meeting! (Though only once I skipped by choice to see my brother.) I haven't hiked in months despite the unnaturally, please-come-outside-and-savour-me weather we have had for an impossible amount of time.
But, I have also had fun eating out with people more this quarter than I probably did all of last year. I have partied more, seen more movies, spent more time with my housemates than I did last quarter. I have done about the same level of work, although whether or not I have been assigned as much is debatable. I have napped more. But I have cooked less, worked out less, bouldered less, spent less time on LJ or outside. I have listened to music more. I have done DP work more, but slept less.
Oddly, I haven't even felt that desperate wanderlust and desire to escape into Nature that I usually do, nor a desire to truly catch anybody up on what's really going on.
And now, I forget where I was going with this post, so I end it where I began: tonight was a blessing. I hope, I dream, I WILL that I find more time to read like this in the future, even if I only do it for a half an hour or fourty-five minutes. If I could just somehow make it habit, like doing push-ups in front of my altar, then I would feel guilty for NOT relaxing and reading rather than 'wasting' an hour with a book when I have a stack of math problems to plough through.
I also need to meditate again, but I can't seem to do this... nor have I done non-ADF ritual or magic in what feels like ages. Funny how I get all weird about that... I experience the need to study or practice magic much in the same way I experience physical hunger. It's uncomfortable. Not doing anything for so long when I have SO much to learn because I hardly know anything is much like sitting on an airplane too long... my knees are cramping, I have to pee but the stall is still taken, and I'm sick of trying to subsist on peanuts and ginger ale. I need something greater...
Some part of me really wants to stand up and stretch and it just can't seem to figure out how.
What to do about any of this I have no idea...
It's bed time. My thoughts are incoherent and when I close my eyes I picture a cold misty lake for some reason...
I realize I am going to pay for this later, but I really don't care. I feel so good. I feel so rich and well-off and reconnected and spoiled and glowing. I got to READ, guys! And for once it didn't occur at some gods-forsaken hour of the morning! This time it wasn't relegated to the few unwanted hours of the day when sleep-time can be sacrificed for book-time with minimal consequence, or to sporadic chapters between classes that leave me feeling hideously guilty afterwards. It was just blatant, brazen reading. Right in plain sight of all of the other responsibilities I could have lifted. Everybody else at Oakland did Homework, but I simply cuddled on the couch engrossed in Drawing Down the Moon.
Gods, but it was perfect.
Ashley read on the other side of the couch from me. Intrigued, amused, or impressed, I would frequently read small passages and quotes to her, and she would read small passages and quotes to me in turn from her class book. We determined that I am allegedly a pantheist and that Ashley, in my words, is a nontheist. We also agreed never to work in steel mills just because we didn't trust our beaus with the harlots there. But for the most part we were quiet, cuddled up in blankets and lost in our works.
Weifei came in at some point, set her laptop on the ottoman, and joined us in silence. We talked for a moment about oranges, but we soon forgot about our intentions to get up and get some. Then Anji came in and she was a little bit noisy initially, until she too into poli-sci reading and quiet note-taking.
At one point Anji's phone beeped and she had an entire conversation I somehow did not hear. I didn't realize I did not hear it until Ashley quietly teased her about it afterward. It occurred to me then how engrossed I was in the silence I had been seeking, and how good it felt to be able to get lost in a book that wasn't even fantasy or sci-fi. "I am reading," I thought to myself. "I am somewhere I always wanted to be." I glanced up at my housemates clustered together on the old red couch, each of them reading or working or studying with various levels of intensity, and smiled. I was very happy.
I probably would have read for only an hour and a half until Ashley went to bed. Her going to bed reminded me that I too needed to go to bed, especially because tomorrow is our hard-core work-out day (aerobics, belly-dancing, and potentially clubbing.) But I was so intent on just reading that I kept on reading for another half an hour, until finally I hit a good stopping point and realized I wanted to hit the sack.
But first I wanted to write about it here. I don't know why. I probably sound like a blathering idiot for valuing something like this so deeply. But really, I have been fighting off an increasingly bitter jealousy for months now, maybe even years. I'm not sure what it is about now that has made it so difficult to bear. I watch others read and eagerly discuss books, hear of a thousand interesting things I would absolutely love to read, and event get lent a number of titles that deeply interest me. But then... they collect dust. Books I buy for myself in rare moments of self-delusion lay unfinished but never make my to-do list. And I say, gods, I WANT to be learning, I desperately want to be studying things (particularly magic) at the moment... but I don't. I can never seem to make the time. How is it I can find time for so many things but never for the things I could I almost say I want the most? It frustrates me immensely.
I seek to change this behaviour pattern, but I was raised to be enormously productive. Hell, I'm your typical relentlessly-schooled professionally-bound American girl. I was taught efficiency and economy of resources in order that I might attain better ones, and I was taught to treat life as a series of benchmarks that must be accomplished if I am ever to move forard. Time is of the essence, and priority is always given to those things that foster efficiency, opportunity, and individual strengths, particularly when those things will one day generate money (but never time.) I KNOW it is irrational to believe that work is never finished if I can somehow remotely work ahead, and that it is unfair to forbid myself rest after projects because the next could in theory already be finished. But I do so in the hopes that in the future I will have even more time freed up from busting my ass now... much like I did last week and weekend. Suffered all week and was rewarded with an absolutely delightful weekend.
But this was a rare reward in the usual treadmill of dissappointments. I will not get ahead 90% of the time because there will always be more before me, and because my fluid standards for myself will automatically raise each time I climb over a recently-lifted bar. There is no rest in sight. There is no contentment or satisfaction.
And so I know I need to take stock of things, to slow down and devote more attention to the now. I feel I have made huge strides in this already (I take naps this quarter, squeeze fun in on the weekends, and hang out with friends on school-nights now and then...) but it is slowly becoming unravelled. Why? First of all, I am so determined to cherish and spend my free time well that the minute I get it I fill it with a thousand busy opportunities and events. I never just read, meditate, or even catnap for more than 30 minutes at a time. Secondly, the hobbies and habits I DO fill that time with have managed to become obligations. For example, I love aerobics, but not going is not an option to me now. I can't not go to PSA, not see my brother, not make sure to spend time with people who need or deserve it even when I have none myself. Even the people I hang out with are in danger of becoming a pattern... I find myself increasingly uneasy or malcontent when I am able to see some people regularly and then abruptly cannot do so as often, or on the flip side when I seem someone infrequently and suddenly they wish to do so much more often. It is unfair, but I find there are certain people I really do not want to hang out with lately, and others I really do want to hang out with (who do not seem to return these desires.) I have failed at expressing this to either side, though... which is perhaps for the better.
Basically, the gyst is this:
I can't make promises, but I want a million of them.
There is a lot of shifting ground in my life right now.
If you want some perspective of how different things are, I haven't even climbed, my most beloved hobby, ONCE this entire quarter, let alone taken the time to bitch about it here. Fuck, I haven't even gone to a single Mountaineers Meeting! (Though only once I skipped by choice to see my brother.) I haven't hiked in months despite the unnaturally, please-come-outside-and-savour-me weather we have had for an impossible amount of time.
But, I have also had fun eating out with people more this quarter than I probably did all of last year. I have partied more, seen more movies, spent more time with my housemates than I did last quarter. I have done about the same level of work, although whether or not I have been assigned as much is debatable. I have napped more. But I have cooked less, worked out less, bouldered less, spent less time on LJ or outside. I have listened to music more. I have done DP work more, but slept less.
Oddly, I haven't even felt that desperate wanderlust and desire to escape into Nature that I usually do, nor a desire to truly catch anybody up on what's really going on.
And now, I forget where I was going with this post, so I end it where I began: tonight was a blessing. I hope, I dream, I WILL that I find more time to read like this in the future, even if I only do it for a half an hour or fourty-five minutes. If I could just somehow make it habit, like doing push-ups in front of my altar, then I would feel guilty for NOT relaxing and reading rather than 'wasting' an hour with a book when I have a stack of math problems to plough through.
I also need to meditate again, but I can't seem to do this... nor have I done non-ADF ritual or magic in what feels like ages. Funny how I get all weird about that... I experience the need to study or practice magic much in the same way I experience physical hunger. It's uncomfortable. Not doing anything for so long when I have SO much to learn because I hardly know anything is much like sitting on an airplane too long... my knees are cramping, I have to pee but the stall is still taken, and I'm sick of trying to subsist on peanuts and ginger ale. I need something greater...
Some part of me really wants to stand up and stretch and it just can't seem to figure out how.
What to do about any of this I have no idea...
It's bed time. My thoughts are incoherent and when I close my eyes I picture a cold misty lake for some reason...