Something happened inside my head this morning that I need to shut down real fast.
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I’m still working on the jet lag. The first morning I found myself awake very early, and wrote a blog post on my phone from bed just to give myself something to do. This morning, I slept mostly through until about 5:30, a good sign.
As I lay dozing a bit and thinking over the things still undone and scattered about the house—so many Have-To-Dos—I found myself numbering and I have to write a blog post about something among them.
No! Bad Erin! Bad! Bad!
I would like to write because I want to write. I do not have to do this. Even if it is an activity that develops better with a certain amount of discipline, the big picture needs to be that the discipline is in service of skills that in turn serve self-development (or self-maintenance) that I sincerely desire.
Attaching the sense of self-worth to the short-term question of why I will write today is completely backwards.
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I called that thought out and sent it away, got up, drank my coffee, sat a while in contemplation, consulted my to-do list (which does not have “write a blog post every day or you’re a loser” on it), started on laundry and putting away school supplies. Now here I am, resting and digesting my lunch, choosing to spend it writing instead of, oh, deleting emails or looking up recipes I might make for dinner. The latter alternatives would be useful, the last one might be mildly entertaining (I enjoy reading recipes), but the writing is right now a bit more satisfying. Even though I haven’t a great deal of import to say.
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Some day Mark and I will be retired and will have, jointly, more leisure time to use and perhaps to enjoy. Obviously leisure time can be directed outwards, to service of various kinds, and I expect some of ours will. But I expect we’ll want to spend some of it on and for ourselves and each other, and I don’t much like to say that we’ll deserve it, but let’s say that I don’t know of any significant objections to our grateful enjoyment of some of our resources of time, strength, treasure as we live our lives as older persons.
I feel like it might be important for me to deeply come to know the difference between using time on what feel like obligations, and using it on what feel like opportunities (for growth, connection, or enjoyment). All this being distinct from wasting the time—spending it poorly: in numbly disconnecting, in nurturing hostility or resentment, in undermining or neglecting the real duties that remain.
Being honest with myself about why I want (or don’t want) to spend time on something, whether I have to (or don’t have to) do it, strikes me as an important foundation for the interior experience of that time—independently of how I eventually decide to spend it.
bearing blog 