Felt cute, might delete later

I have a pity for discipline that runs deep

I’d rather fail at systems  and standards than force myself to do something as if the reason I’m not doing something is because I’ve got the format of my life wrong

I’m sorry for those people who say sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do,

never,

instead “let’s do an experiment of what would life look like if someone never did anything they didn’t want to do. “

well, it’s a high horse and sometimes even when I think of something I want to do I still end up laying in bed for half the day.

There merit to this, more than I’m giving it credit, conviction is well worth finding and anything done regularly is better off not being a bother, no, where the car breaks down is not on the dishes, or the laundry, it’s on the complexity, or the variety, analysis paralysis, held true by its rhyme, fucks my day up, but more than that, this theory of

“I will love life if (and only if) I only ever do what I love.” Falls somewhere in a low valley beneath my highest self, dragged there by distracted and primitive ancestors, and beaten to a bloody pulp by time and technicolor abyss.

Sometimes love needs a reliable narrator and he goes on a vacation when I’m a coke addicted rat.

And sometimes I wonder if I might not have forever to find conviction before the clock runs out.

My time blindness is the heart of my procrastination and of my care. Patience and going the extra mile are easy, but keeping a routine is hell.

I have a few minds on it. I love to ruminate, and even more than that I love to partially distract my mind while I ruminate so that my thoughts are coming through at only a drip at a time.

This is where it gets tricky. My subconscious has a major preference to totally turn off or to be absolutely engulfed in a task. Neither hyperfixate nor tuned out move the progress bar forward sustainably.

Tuning out has sometimes but rarely been a good strategy for doing nothing when I’m surprised to have found out it’s best to have done nothing.

Hyperfixating has sometimes but rarely been a good strategy to get through a big project or catch up from a backlog.

These are the levers in my rat cage.

They both fall short when they trade sleepless nights for hazy days. They both have helped enough to keep them around, yet my brains incessant gravity towards them makes them a major liability

it’s often really hard for me to argue that being locked in  isn’t presence.  It’s taken years to parse the sensational difference between a soft focus, relaxed gentle and kind, and the part of me that will walk on a treadmill until I die of thirst.

Spoiler - “you’re dehydrated.”

Finding those things that take only the right amount of power, and stay there, is difficult. They can’t become much of a thing in and of themselves, something that branches off and flourishes and uncovers its depth rapidly. More of a jade less of a wisteria. Water it well and pray you don’t kill it as it grows imperceptibly slow.

On the other side it’s often hard to argue that I don’t deserve a few minutes to tune out. This is the call of the zombified technocratic harpies that leaves me all too often with the great prize of existence being watching random things appear before me on a little screen between my hands. Oh to see what I’ve seen, let me transform myself into a king for just one more minute and see if the world and free doting algorithm can entertain me.

I’ve said before that moving was my favorite job. This is why. Because it requires a certain amount of attention to do well, and I’m confident I do it well, and the rest of the brain power. It often has a time constraint of as fast as safely possible, and it always has a tangible visible finale. When I’m moving (like lots of boxes over lots of stairs) the rest of my mind can think freely without the existential angst of wondering if I’m doing the most important most effective thing.

(Side note: The amount of time I’ve spent carelessly wondering if I’m going to do the right thing is heartbreaking, the amount of time I’ve spent avoiding that wondering is devastatingly ten times that.  And, most notably, the amount of time I spend regretting doing anything real, with my hands and body, with people, in real life, is near zero.)

The edges of my mind are the waterfall of attention pouring into the thumbscrolling abyss and the reverent persistence of a dog who just won’t put down a brick.

Somewhere in the middle is a kind warm and welcoming person who feels the sun on his skin and loves to laugh and play and do hard work with friends. This is why I fell in love with Gerlev. Why I started doing retreats where I am trying to stretch the limit of what we do - circle, and woodworking, and nothing, and adventures, and movement.

Overwhelmingly doing real things with real people teaches me about myself and helps me learn how to be a better part of a group.

Overwhelmingly doing the work together is the experience of freedom I thought I’d never find.