joy of empty days
Urgency exists in the mind, not in the world
I like empty days. Empty weeks. Empty calendars.
Yet when I talk to other people, they often pride themselves on how busy they are. Having an empty schedule is anathema.
The culture at the moment is that being busy is good.
The hidden message seems to be that by being busy you are doing something important, and by doing something important you must be an important person.
It is a status symbol of this era. (Historically though not so : In renaissance Italy for example, the wealthy were seen as having an abundance of time and leisure).
Even beyond work, there is an expectation to be ‘doing something’. Filling your time with productive activities, side hustles (sigh) all whilst having an active social life. What do you mean you aren’t hanging out with all your friends in the centre of a major city, going to concerts, dating multiple people and progressing in your job? What are you doing?
When people ask what I am doing, I take a certain amount of satisfaction in saying ‘nothing much’.
It’s a hidden secret pleasure. I am not busy. I am not doing something. Time stretches out like an empty meadow. This is a freedom that some billionaires can’t seem to afford.
You can take off your watch. Turn off your phone and let the shadows cast by the sun be your guide for the day.
Going nowhere. Doing nothing. If you pay attention, maybe you will find something beyond words here.
July 2022 updates- links and thoughts
Links and Reading
Currently Reading:
- A Guide to Japan by Pico Iyer
- Rules of Radiology
Listening : FKJ Tiny Desk - on repeat 24/7
Directives: Give Up
Quotes
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment (Rumi)
Links : Pinboard
“We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.”
“Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.”
Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkmann audio on Waking Up App
https://hmmdaily.com/2018/10/18/your-real-biological-clock-is-youre-going-to-die/
“If you intend to have children, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children.”
Themes of the Month
Book Notes
Books don’t work as a medium of knowledge. You don’t absorb information by reading sentences. You absorb information by applying it, playing with it and connecting it to other disparate topics.
You can test this theory by asking a person to ’tell me about the last book you read’. Especially if it’s a non-fiction book, they won’t be able to recall it very well.
The solution?
- Either read for pure enjoyment (junk fiction) or pure education (textbooks)
- Take notes on any books you do want to be able to talk about.
- Steal ideas from books you read and just integrate it into your world view.
Currently : All notes are on ‘Obsidian’. This allow me to re-read books and explore the ideas without having to physically find the book and re-read it.
Thoughts on Time
Decision making is the ability to manage time.
Etymology of decide is to ‘sever’. Sever a pathway (similar to suicide, homocide etc).
You have a finite amount of time and an infinite amount of activities. The problem is that a lot of these activities are actually valuable. But you can’t do them all.
So decide. Cut out. Sever. Focus on a few things and cut the rest out
Sunlight on a log doesn’t make it catch fire But when you focus the light with a magnifying glass, it will burst into flame
Easy vs Difficult
Doing the difficult thing actually overall makes you happier
It’s the difference between deep happy and shallow happy. (Derek Sivers)
Shallow happy is binge watching a Netflix show. Deep happy is reading a difficult book and expanding your world view
Shallow happy is eating the ice cream. Deep happy is working out and eating right
Shallow happy is easy. Deep happy is hard.
Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.
June 2022 updates - poetry and redesign
Restructuring the site
Getting back into writing on a blog, so I took the time to restructure the site.
I’ve recreated the Blog page containing anything I want to write about that I find interesting. No definitive conclusion. No advice. Can just be pointless drivel, thoughts, interesting links, or just a view into life circumstances during a particular time. Archive show all the posts arranged by year.
Then a Directives section containing short ‘do this and don’t do that advice’. This is for myself. Don’t take it too seriously. It’s often contradictory. Any advice is context dependent. Take what is useful, reject what is not.
A Fiction section to hopefully inspire me to write more fiction.
A bit of an update to Me
A section with some music A section with some photos
Poetry
I’ve been reading a lot of poetry- mostly Rumi and David Whyte, and I wanted to articulate the value I get if anyone asks.
Words are a difficult medium for expressing the internal state. Sometimes, you want to convey ineffable states or paradoxical ideas. Poetry can do this.
I don’t like all poetry. But I’m enjoying Rumi - a Sufi/mystic poet, that writes on perennial ideas of grief, death, loneliness, love, suffering and many more.
My favourite is the Guest House and Only Breath. Moment of Happiness Birdsong
These definitely make me think that he had deep ’non dual awareness’/spiritual experiences.
I’m surprised I like poetry. Looking back a few years ago, it’s not something I would actually have considered enjoying. Probably because I had read a lot of bad poetry (overly self obsessed / too snarky / pretentious)
Cycling and Walking
I’ve been green-pilled. Cycling is the best way to travel. You don’t sit in traffic. You get sun exposure. You get exercise. It’s faster (with traffic). No worries about parking. It’s fun.
Cars are expensive. They take up room. Cities become constructed around cars, promoting ‘suburbia’. They cause air pollution.
I think I’ve become a bike commuter (for the rest of the foreseeable future).
Silent Meditation Retreat
Just finished a 7 day meditation retreat. Profound. Hard to put embodied first person experiences into words, because the practice is non conceptual.
This means it is pretty hard to explain what meditation actually is to someone who has had no exposure.
My default response starts with explaining basic ‘mindfulness’. If you’ve ever sat with your mind (and never paid close attention internally) you’ll realise that… you can’t. The mind wanders. Ask a person to focus on their breath, they will forget and the mind will wander to a story about the past or a fantasy of the future.
The basic training is consistently returning your attention to the sensations of the breath. In doing so, you are cultivating the ability to pay attention to the internal introspective sensations of the body. You are paying attention to the contents arising within conscious experience.
This is valuable because you are then paying attention to life. To the present moment. Rather than being lost in delusions.
Buddhist philosophy claims that by paying close attention this, you can understand something about the nature of the mind in regards to ‘suffering’/hurt/unsatisfactoriness.
From an intellectually curious perspective too, there is much to understand about the nature of the mind. Science can look at it through external means, but there really is another way to explore your conscious experience - directly.
A good video to direct people to : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3XUee3-meA
Removal of Tech
Again going back to a relatively ’tech’ free life. No Reddit. No Twitter. The phone is on black and white/silent. All socials off.
Focus on some real projects. Anything worth doing requires real focus, and I was finding that it is incompatible with using many of these services.
Alternate? Read real books. Write crap posts on the blog. Take photos. Cycle. Sit on the floor and listen to music. Hang out in person. Observe.
I’ve noticed spending time/writing on the laptop is actually way less distracting than mobile devices.
I’ve also noticed when I’ve removed/reduced tech in the past, it’s been the ‘happiest/peaceful/content’ and also the most creative I’ve been.
Inevitably for some inane reason, I go back to centring my life around the smart phone and distraction. I always regret it.
Value of Photos
I’ve restructured the photos section.
Part of it involved looking back through my entire photo gallery. I had a few thoughts on the topic.
I’d previously written about photos and the importance of documenting. This is just another reminder.
Carry your camera. Photography is infinitely more fun with a camera than a smartphone. You pay much closer attention.
You only need one or two good photos to throw you back into the past.
A good photo is one of the best gifts you can give someone.
Take photos of everything. It takes no space. The memory is way more valuable.