Tag: #Thoughts

Energy Inflation

Unproductive. It is a word that can feel like it’s nagging you. It floats around in your head telling you that you haven’t accomplished things, that you should be finding better ways to spend your time, generally making you feel like you are wasting your potential.

Even though we’ve had it reasserted over and over to us that we should be. We can’t be productive all the time. Unproductiveness has its purpose and it is something that from time to time we all need to be.

I spent the end of the year being unproductive. I spent it not doing much of anything actually. Trying to rebuild those reserves of energy I’ll need to get through the next months, to be productive.

Unfortunately, the last couple of years it doesn’t feel as if I can replenish that energy. It feels like I’m expending more than ever before as if my batteries can no longer hold a charge.

Like everything else in life, it is becoming more expensive to be productive. More expensive to buy groceries to feed your body; more expensive to find the energy to fill your mind.

When I’m required to be productive it costs me so much more than I have. Not necessarily because I have more on my plate, though this year that is true, more because any reserves that might have carried over from prior years have long been depleted. That time I’m meant to be resting and unproductive in order to store energy instead is just immediately being spent.

I’m sure we are all feeling similarly these days but if you aren’t – tell me your secret! Or just send some extra energy my way.

Seven Things

I obsess. Sometimes about little things: the organization of k-cups; the positions of light switches; parking alignment. It is annoying, but it is also just the way my brain works.

I obsess. Sometimes about big things: my life, work, finances and health; family and friend’s health and wellbeing; humanity’s foibles. It is worrying, but it is also just the way my brain works.

I obsess. Sometimes about ideas: renovating the spaces in my house or our rental; disliking my car; winning millions in the lottery and spreading the wealth. It is aggravating, but it is also just the way my brain works.

I obsess. Sometimes about feelings: having them; not having them; how to get rid of or find them. It is draining, but it is also just the way my brain works.

I obsess. Sometimes about nothing: things I never said; things I never did; things others never said or did. It is pointless, but it is also just the way my brain works.

I obsess. Sometimes about everything: all the things; all the thoughts; all the feelings. It is overwhelming, but it is also just the way my brain works.

I obsess. Sometimes about obsessing: big things; little things; ideas; feelings; nothing; everything. It is obsessive, but it is just the way my brain works.

Year 43: Day One

A new year; a new decade of life; a new season of the year. These are often the mile markers that so many like to use to decide to implement improvements in their lives. As if they have some special power that will help to foster the hoped-for changes. Surely to some extent, it can provide a starting point, but in reality, change will only happen when it wants to when the circumstances are just right. Change is nothing if not fickle, definitely friends with Fate and Chaos.

We want good things to happen to us, try manifesting them out of thin air. Often we focus too closely on creating the perfect vision of our lives that we don’t see the big changes that are about to hit us from another direction.

The past couple of years dealt several blows collectively to the world and personally. Watching friends and family, strangers even, deal with all manner of complications to their lives creates a miasma of emotions. Dealing with personal crises, family crises, work crises, world crises, can all be more than we’re prepared for – especially when they are all happening at the same time.

This is when we start looking for those changes we can control. Start meditating hoping it will calm the mind, create clarity in all the emotions. Exercise the body to spend excess or unwanted emotions. Take on a new hobby or read new books to broaden horizons. Shout at the void that is the internet through social media. Does any of it work? Controlling our narrative, our thoughts, our body? Perhaps, because some measure of control is at the very least a balm. Control makes that simplicity of the familiar bearable.

When we start questioning that is when we start to spiral out of control. Questioning the why, how and what of life, comparing to determine needed or unneeded changes. Unfortunately, the world tends to have too little transparency when we need it and too much opaqueness when we don’t – curated for presentation – making it hard to know where we truly stand in life. A constant balancing act to find control in our bit of universe.

This may be the start of a new year chronologically, insignificant in the everyday-ness of it, but important in that we are here to count it. To contemplate and try to express in words the chaos that has been and will be. To sound as pretentious as ever but to mean every word of it.

Today is day one of putting little thoughts here. Day one of trying to focus the mind on something other than surviving from one day to the next – emotionally and physically. Day one of remembering the things we used to enjoy. Day one of making a little change that may or may not survive past this night, but maybe it can echo until a new change occurs, one that Fate and Chaos approve of as well.

Day one of Year 43.