Does anything we do really count as “wasting” time? I am often blinded by some need to be “productive” (whatever that actually means), but the things I ultimately do, whether that is sleeping too much, spending time watching movies or engaged in long conversations, are things that I must need and want on some level or I would not do them. These acts do not seem productive. But are they needed in order to be productive?
What you propose leads to darkness. When all we need is light.
It is all just bright lights in a blur. Nothing to see here; no more thanks to give.
You must eventually run out of people.
Is it that life you crave – or just the difference from the one you live now?
This year, I may have turned a page or two in the book that makes up this life but haven’t lived up to everything I am capable of and wanted to do. This is always a disappointing realization as a year comes to a close, even if the responsibility for this failure falls squarely on me. I could make (mostly valid) excuses, but there’s no sense pointing out all the things that have been out of my control, all the things that dragged me down, all the things I avoided.
Instead it’s more logical to turn the tide rather than the page. Take a different approach. Stop falling into bad habits, lazy patterns and comfort zones. Sit in the moment without trying to change things that do not need to be changed; focus on the things that need to.
Fuck me, life and everything we do as a part of it is just so … absurd. Watching poorly attired people wearing determined facial expressions march through airports scoping out their seats competitively, desperately, pulling these rectangular boxes containing the essentials of their lives for a few days… what are we all doing?
I have moments like this when I take in everything around me and wonder if this can actually be real. It’s utterly ridiculous and yet… here it is.
E, you are an idiot.
Divorce
–José A. AlcantaraHe has flown headfirst against the glass
and now lies stunned on the stone patio,
nothing moving but his quick beating heart.
So you go to him, pick up his delicate
body and hold him in the cupped palms
of your hands. You have always known
he was beautiful, but it’s only now, in his stillness,
in his vulnerability, that you see the miracle
of his being, how so much life fits in so small
a space. And so you wait, keeping him warm
against the unseasonable cold, trusting that
when the time is right, when he has recovered
both his strength and his sense of up and down,
he will gather himself, flutter once or twice,
and then rise, a streak of dazzling
color against a slowly lifting sky.
Embarrassment is a weirdly useless response. I frequently felt it as a child, when shy, awkward and completely uncomfortable with any kind of attention. Eventually it became something I never considered – one can only be embarrassed if one allows herself. And it’s been a long time since I allowed myself to feel it.
Suddenly, though, in the face of not being able to live up to my own standards, burning out and disappointing others, I am crippled by a strange embarrassment that renders me incapable of knowing what to do next.
I was cautioned, “You can’t live another person’s life for them. You can help, but they have made their choices.” I should have listened rather than getting dragged in. Nothing I have done has amounted to anything, and while I trudge on through my daily life and its trials, I find myself feeling embarrassed for having taken the path I did, for not satisfying my own needs, for not heeding the words of caution I received. Now I feel hamstrung and crippled by my own silence.