Another week has gone by! What have I learned this week? I haven't learned anything new, but I have re-learned that a person can only focus and attend to so much. What do I mean? It means that I can only put up with a finite number of things before I start to get really stressed out. I don't think I'm exactly unique about this either. However as I discussed in previous posts, I start to want to retreat a bit when too much is going on.
I might retreat, but my retreat may not exactly public. Externally I might appear to be fine, but on the inside I slowly tend to get drained. The difficult thing with this is that the more you put on everything is just dandy, the more physic debt you feel (you feel the gap between your public and private self). For me, this manifests in trying to conserve my speed, and a desire for time for myself. I notice my thought patterns even get altered, as "just trying to get through the day" results in me often finding the most efficient ways of dealing with situations -- often not resulting in explicit analytical thought. Sure, I'm thinking on intuitive level a lot, which is NOT not thinking, however, I can feel my attention span just being ripped apart.
So, what's a boy to do? Again, it's time to reaffirm some ideas, some old notions that now have some more resonance after going through some life situations. Numero uno, one has actively manage one's life to be an advocate for yourself. As I was telling Roadielocks, the western world encourages one to not think, just consume, devour, and enjoy. Being exposed to so much stuff, with so many consumer options, perceived choices, at such a velocity, we are conditioned to passively just go with it. But without an active effort to prune, limit, focus, we are left with a whole lot of shit. But with all the modern conveniences we have, why would one even want to do that?
The title of the post, you ask about? Well, we just went to Gloucester this weekend where I got to see the sea, which always clears my head, and we are heading to Glasgow (and Scotland) at the end of the month. I will have more opportutnies to try to clear my head.
If you're into this kind of thing, this clip of J Mascis and Kennedy is kind of amusing ("Kennedy you're insane"), check it out...
Bon voyage!
