Had what I feel was an unproductive day at work. I felt that I attended to stuff randomly and was pressed for time. Too busy and all that, which led to Alon’s ‘sham activity’. Then, at home, I suddenly wondered whether it might not have been a case of having too little to do. Perhaps I’d been spinning my wheels. It is easier when there is urgent stuff to do – you just do it (and grow anxious about not having the time to attend to other duties – but that’s a different story). I guess, and it’s a good one, that when I don’t actually have something in front of me on my plate that I start dithering about what to select. I don’t cope well with smorgasbords.
And so for sanity’s sake how about drawing up a list or lists for me to attend to in times of leisure, both at work and at home. Items will appear in order of priority. In a sense this is like having a routine – so maybe this exercise is simply a refinement of that, in which case so-be-it. I’ll give that a go today at the start of my three-day-weekend.
The Real Reason (repeated)
I’ve covered writing an as exercise to get things clear in my own mind. Well and good. But there’s an addendum: I need things down on paper (or on the computer or online…) as a ready reference.
You see, from one day to the next I tend to forget. One day I work out the secret to a happy life, but then the next day, I need to work the answer out anew. Things don’t stick with me. Maybe it’s a kind of Alzheimer’s.
Let’s make a computer analogy – there’s hardware and there’s software. In terms of software, the programming I’m loaded with tends to ‘evaporate’ in some way. The neural circuits aren’t permanently hard-wired.
The beauty of this, of course, is that you get to experience that learning process over and over again. It’s experience that our existence boils down do. I guess that the groove grows deeper and deeper and that eventually, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, you are bound, finally, to ‘get it’. But there’s a lot of territory to cover before you attain that level.
I’ve mentioned Alzheimer’s; let’s get Asperger’s onto the table too. Let’s call that the hardware. My dose of the later requires me to keep on task – strictly one task at a time – so that I don’t become overwhelmed. And therefore this ritual of penning my thoughts is sorely needed. I’ve always know that on some level – witness my signing up at the age of fifteen to learn the technique of meditating when the TM people first came to town.
List of reminders
The model that works best – will work best for me for writing b1ography.4onymou5 – is the writing I started to write almost 20 years ago. I have it somewhere still: ‘The Sane Man is Nowhere’. Out of interest I may well scan its pages one day, and attach it to this. Free-flow writing as it comes, spouting forth out of the belief that I have something valid to say even if, at the moment, I’m not (was not) aware of what that something might be.
I may write a commentary on various spiritual growth books or personalities – that is probably already on the web. I’d better do a search before re-inventing the wheel. Before that, though, there’s this business of simply getting through the day!
I had one of them yesterday. Filled with dread and drive and ‘I should be doing this, I want to be doing that, I could be doing the other’. It was horrible . . . but also fascinating. For the first time, thanks to the words of Eckhart, I was able to sort of sit back and observe myself, once removed, and watch the commotion.
This happens from time to time. I wouldn’t say that this is a bivalent polar whatchamacallit. I’m not manic-depressive. But I do, somehow, somewhere, have taken on board a way of being, or existing or doing, far removed from the carefree, living-life-in-the-moment style of eternal childhood. Wasn’t it great to be ten?
Let me reiterate what I’ve learned, because honestly, those days when you get up on the other side of the bed! Is it just me, or do others find themselves forgetting and having to relearn all those tricks and principles they pick up in the course of their lives almost daily.
Here they are then – those tips of the trade:
¨ there is nothing that has to be done
¨ everything that one might do has the same no-value
¨ generally it is easier to specialize in one thing
¨ follow your inclination as to what activity to choose (mine is self-growth)
¨ the means of earning a livelihood need not be what you do, it could just be incidental
¨ even if you are obsessed by one thing, it won’t occupy you for your whole day
¨ I, personally, needs heaps of window-gazing time
¨ my goal is to experience, and explore largely through reading
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