Redefine Time

My most deadly mental trap for productiveness is convincing myself to not do the things I want because I don't have a full day to start doing them. I work swing shift and fall asleep immediately after coming home, so when I wake up I have a solid amount of time before I have to go to work, despite this I will refuse to let myself enjoy or be productive with this time because it is not a day off.

I need to redefine and come to an understanding with time. How long does it take to start reading a book? You can be through the majority of it in just a few hours. I have a few hours, so just read the fucking book. Even on my days off, I typically only really do these things within a 1-4 hour window and will feel very satisfied and content with them, and I have this time before work so i ought to use it! Even just one hour of some mindful consumption will do wonders for my mood and ability to enjoy the rest of the day.

I Want To Be Present

At times I  feel I am on a treadmill of sorts, emotionally speaking. There is this desire that arises where I want to feel the contentment and satisfaction of a day well spent, where I wish to get all I can from an activity and feel a real enrichment from it. The great paradox in this being that the more I desire such, the less I am able to achieve it. With that desire is an expectation that actively keeps me from embracing the activity and present moment for all that it is worth. Instead of engaging in all that can be engaged with I am constantly waiting and looking for the moment where it will all align and I can become full immersed and enveloped in the full nature of the activity. With every moment where I haven't become entranced is another moment I worry about time wasted. "I only have this small time to enjoy this, why can't I enjoy it" Every thought and worry another reason I can't begin to enjoy that small time I define as the only time.

I trap myself with these things. When you delve into self help literature and videos the problems and solutions are for the undisciplined. How to start cleaning up your messes, planning your day, taking care of your body, eating right, making your goals more concise and precise. These are all essential and helpful. These all sell, because these are the things people typically have trouble with, but what of the person who is disciplined? What of the man with his shit together but just can't find that solid contentment and enrichment that makes a life a life well lived. That's the predicament I find myself in oftentimes. After attending to all I I need to attend to, I long for leisure but I won't let myself enjoy that recreation. And that inability to enjoy my time outside of my tasks will then funnel back into me not being able to perform those tasks as well as I believe I ought to. Bringing me to the beginning where I have to get my discipline back in order before even considering enjoying any free time once again, just to be brought back to the same predicament of not being able to get what I need out of that free time and the cycle starts anew.

This is why I call it a treadmill. I am running repeatedly along the same cycle over and over. There is a slight irony to it all however. The solution is simple. The solution is to stop overthinking. You need to be present. I need to be present. Its deceptive in its simplicity however. Because the next question is how do you be present? A question that is seemingly impossible to answer. A question that is the foundation of the whole Buddhist religion. A question that is answered without words and experienced in full entirely internally. I think I find my beginnings in being present by grounding myself. Asking myself questions, opening my soul. Asking why my body feels a certain way. I go for the physiology, because I know I have learned to hide away and ignore my emotions, and that's how my body manifests those emotions even if I am not aware of it. "I am not relaxed. There is a tension in my stomach and my legs. My head has the smallest niggling of a headache and no matter the comfort of my seating I cannot help but slouch." I ask myself why I would be feeling that way physically. "Is it uncertainty? Stress? Worry?  Are those the emotions my body is hiding from me? What could be the reason I am feeling those emotions? What may be the cause of those feelings? Should it be affecting me in the ways it is currently?" I am opening up a dialogue with myself and allowing a decompression to transpire. I am letting my feel. It is when I let myself acknowledge the very things my body is not letting me feel that I can feel. This subconscious coping mechanism is more than a nullification of negative emotions, its a nullification of all emotion. So when I open those emotions up, feel them, and then let them pass, it in turn lets me feel positive ones as well. The emotional undercurrent of my recreational time can finally sweep me up and lose me in its luster. I can feel it. Becoming present in that moment is to feel that moment and all its offerings. The feelings of the activity become the feelings I am experiencing. An experience I can finally have because I let myself feel again after hiding away that capacity for empathy. 

Reason For Being

In the past, whenever I asked myself the question on why I wish to be alive I would always tell myself "To experience all the art I could." This externalized my desire for life to an object that wasn't tied another person or tied to my own success or circumstances or image of myself - things I saw as the objects others would begin to feel suicidal over.




When I chose this as my reason to live I always told people it was because of the power of art. How human beings can produce a series of words, a confluence of sounds, a collection of brushstrokes on canvas, an interactive medium; and experiencing these things can evoke extreme sensations within me. I can laugh until my face turns red and my breath seems impossible catch, I can become inspired and driven on a day I had already written off, I can mourn the death of a person who was never real yet feel the pain of grief, I can be compelled to eccentricity in a system that demands conformity. Its a beauty that cannot be ignored, a beauty that only humans are capable of. This ability to create and affect others through that creation. I loved that beauty.

But I've begun to deconstruct even that. Really dig to the roots of that belief. Why do I value that? And I've come to a reevaluation of my reason for being.




I want to experience what it means to be human. I want to feel the full spectrum of experience that this life has to offer. I want to let it in and accept the nature of things. I want to understand all it means to be a human being. I valued art because it gave me an external way to experience those emotions after a life of repression and hiding away my humanity, I called all those feelings that didn't further me in a practical and professional way as unnecessary and robbed myself of feeling the full extent of my LIVED experience. I want to get all I can from my perceptions, from my time on this earth, the people I meet, the bonds I share. I catch myself sometimes, I see that I am doing it again - clouding and shrouding my soul from being a person, being a human - I want to never know that feeling again. I want to bear my soul to the nature of being. To take in all I can be given in this small timeframe of infinity I lucked into the opportunity to experience