Every New Year’s Day, i try to come up with a resolution that will help increase sanity in some way or another. Thus, today, i reflected on the past year.
Last year, i resolved to address particular problems in my personal life. As much as it has been a struggle, i feel much stronger this year in that domain, having made some truly wise decisions to gain control and value my sanity first and foremost.
Yet, while i took hold of some things, my professional life spiraled more than i would like to admit. So much goodness has emerged (thank you to all involved in helping with that), but i have my mother’s tendency to forget the necessity of the word ‘no’ and thus have gotten in quite a bit over my head. I have been stretched so thin that i feel brittle and snappy. I know that it is not a good cycle to go 24/7 continuously for months and then crash and burn at holidays, yet i do it ritually. Thus, the meta issue is that i need to construct boundaries.
In thinking today, i realized another thing about sanity checks. I love engaging with my friends. I love engaging with my work. Yet, both are truly mind exhausting and i’m feeling that immensely. I realized that, since i moved to San Francisco, i’ve drastically decreased “entertain me” time. This must changed.
“Entertain me” time is the time that i spend being entertained by outside stimuli without having to engage back mentally. Movies, books, dancing were always staples of the “entertain me” time. When i was in Boston, i saw virtually a movie a week. Whenever we’d had enough of the Media Lab, we’d romp over to Kendall and see whatever was on next. I read pleasure books on the T, sat in the Commons people watching. Most notably, i went dancing 2x per week where less than 1 hour of each was devoted to socializing. (Since i’ve moved to SF, the majority of dance time is spent socializing, not dancing. Or socializing on the dance floor by interactive dancing, not trance dancing.) And darnit, i’ve stopped exercising and meditating, both of which were huge mental downtimes.
Perhaps i’m getting old, but i need more mental downtime than i’m getting. (And, no doubt, i need more physical body time.) Thus, i resolve to work on increasing my ability to strictly create boundaries on my time and increase my mental downtime through a combination of “entertain me” time and other meditative activities.
Z = You know I get pretty agressive about doing some form of workout time every morning pre-email and pre-blogging and pre-IRC. I find if I let that slip and get into the flow of connecting with others, it’s hard to break away.
Whether it’s aerobics + weight-lifting (tough workout) or just a quick yoga stretching routine (easy workout) — I make myself start the day with one form or another of exercise.
I talk about going to the gym a lot, which I do, but never first thing. I workout at home on my livingroom floor with a DVD or videotape first — so I can’t make any excuses NOT to workout. If I have to drive to a gym (and I would, as I don’t have one in my apt), I’d have to shower, do some hair, some make-up and by then I’ll give up on the whole thing or find something “more pressing” to give my attention to. I workout from about 5:00am – 6:00am and it changes how I feel about everything the whole rest of the day. If I miss that time, I have a much less productive and much more stressful day.
Good luck with this resolution. Make it easy on yourself. Make it roll-out-of-bed simple. I even put my workout clothes on the top of my bed covers at night so they are RIGHT THERE in the morning. No excuses. The Rodney Yee AM Yoga DVD is terrific — deceptively simple but you get a gigantic ROI.
Cheers — H
I came in here to read the post on technological determinism and found myself wanting to comment on this instead. I, too, feel the same challenge between critical mindedness and chilling out. And I also fell off the meditation cushion six months ago. Considering what you have said about being labled a determinist and what you’ve just said here about wanting to slow down a bit I couldn’t help but think about the Buddhist approach of ‘first thought best thought’… while it’s antithetical to posting something theoretical it might be a good “default” setting for blogging?
My resolutions are much the same as yours (came by your site by way of some random clicking at BarlowFriendz), and I just wanted to say I wish you great success!
Mel – great reminder!
The trick is that i trust myself when it comes to my thoughts in ways that i don’t trust myself when it comes to my expression of said thoughts. That’s always the trick in these spaces…