I am not good with sad. I can do angry really well, but I am not good with sad. So lately I have been a bit tested with grief. I go straight from sad to depressed, which feels futile. At least sad is productive. Depressed is just a holding pattern. And boy does life itself sometimes feel like a holding pattern. When I am trying to keep things going (laundry, cleaning, cooking etc), it is hard for me to feel like I am doing anything more than treading water. There are so many things we do that hold us back. And many of those things bring a strange sense of comfort. So getting rid of them is challenging for me. For example, the amount of time and energy I have wasted on thinking about food and body image and exercising or not exercising could have been used for so many more interesting projects, reading more books, spending more time with friends and family. But does all of this self awareness make me change my ways? Not really. But I have at least toned down these voices so that they waste less of my time.
I spend so much time wasting time and then complaining that I never get anything done. In the name of deserving and hedonism I spend hours doing 'fun' things that really are not so fun, just to feel like I am being taken care of. It is so easy to sit back and tell myself I need to do things differently, but after years of the same patterns it is hard to know how to change things. It all feels overwhelming. I am not one for self help books, but I might try reading Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. I heard the author speak on NPR and I realized how much of what I do is probably just habit and that habit is something that I can change.
I am rambling a bit here, but hopefully you get my gist. And if you do, thank goodness, because I don't think I get it myself. I just know that things can be different. We don't need to become a facebook nation. We can go back to being connected to ourselves and each other. Distraction should no longer be the primary occupation. Or at least I need to not make it mine. Mark Zuckerberg can do whatever the hell he wants.