It's about mindfulness (sorry, those 52 yoga classes have me picking up the vocab). Yet, I've come to realize it's much more about habits, thoughts, intention and energy. When I worry about my hours it's the technology I immediately turn to for critique and ritualized rejection. I sit on a hidden staircase without any distraction, with only myself and write something down. But many other mornings I find myself in parts of the city I've never been, seeing something small I never noticed before, ideas entering my mind that might not have gotten there any other way. Some mornings I roll over and pick up my phone immediately, or I don't feel like putting on shoes and walking out the door. It's noteworthy how good it feels to do this. If I think about it too much (which obviously I do) I end up wanting to make panicked resolutions, such as a recent one when I vowed that each morning I would take a walk first thing, write down at least one thought on paper, take photos of what I saw and consider the contents of my own brain before I checked anything (email, etc). I wonder what space in my brain would be freed up if I didn't know who every single celebrity was dating? Morning walk images. I do sometimes waste an hour of my life reading Us Weekly. I do sometimes buy more shiny lipgloss than I need. I do occasionally stare listlessly into the glowy void of my phone screen. A recent viewing of The Bling Ringhad me concerned that, though I'm not those girls, I'm not 100% NOT them either. Certainly we're all complex enough to contain multitudes and contradictions, yet, in my darker moments I wonder if, cumulatively, the time clocked in one pursuit or another falls in favor of the Instagramming, cellphone fiddling, celebrity gossip accruing, Netflix streaming part of who I am. What I do with this hour and that can range dramatically from watching three episodes of Pretty Little Liars in a row to playing Sea Stars to putting the finishing touches on a novel that has taken me six years to write to cooking meals for my friends. What does it all mean? And what else should I be doing? What moments make me stop and think they are best represented by emoji hearts? I've spent 38 of my days blissfully social media free. I can't argue with my data these things, however big or small have comprised this amount of my time. Occasionally I will look at the lagging Analogue & Creation count and hurriedly tape pictures of volcanoes in my journal, sketch spirals around them and write something secret in my own handwriting. Some of these are conceptual and others, obviously, aren’t. My counter includes boxes labeled Writing, Analogue & Creation, Yoga, Days with No Social Media, Gratitude, Walk and Love (as represented by emoji hearts). It's very reminiscent of Ze Frank's jellybeans above (though it doesn't make me tear up like his video). In this way you track what is (or isn’t) important to you. You create different pleasingly colored boxes which you label however you want and with each tap on the box the number counts up. The cold, hard data of our hours might surprise or disturb us if we think about it too closely the quantitative illuminating the qualitative. I start to wonder what exactly it is I'm doing with this hour and that, and if it's really how I want to spend my life. Then I return home to jobs, ubiquitous cellphones, urban angst, Instagram and expensive restaurants. There's no cellphone service and only dial-up Internet because I'm out in the woods (you're only looking up the most vital information in that context, I assure you). I often read for extended periods of time and have long conversations where no one checks their phone. In those carefree weeks I'm swimming in rivers, hang gliding, cooking, gardening, walking and sitting on the porch drinking wine. I tend to become more aware and critical of how I spend my time when I return home from vacations. It's that middle reaction where I most often find myself. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.”ĭepending on when you catch me, this statement, which I anxiously and existentially believe to be true, can offer either great comfort, profound horror, or something more ambiguous in the middle. Annie Dillard, in her beautiful book The Writing Life, says, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.
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