Finding the light and feeding our humanity
Can we all just agree that time changes are the most ridiculous thing that we do as a society and be done with them once and for all?
That said, falling back is definitely my preferred mode of messing with our collective concept of time. I desperately want to be a morning person, and earlier light does make that much easier.
Truth be told, I haven’t been missing my morning posts due to oversleeping. Well, not most mornings anyway. I’ve been dutifully getting up, making my tea, and taking up my station at my computer. My brain and fingers just keep getting hijacked by other projects. Long neglected writing projects that are sick of being ignored are pushing their way through to the surface. A joint project a friend and I have been talking about for nearly two decades is suddenly on the move. One post about my utter hatred of the month of November turned into a chapter for a book I’ve been putting off writing for the last 7 years. I might still share the chapter with you when I finish it.
It’s crazy what can come to the surface when you have the brain space to allow it. I was talking to a friend yesterday about how life just gets buried in lists. Sometimes the only conversations we have with our partners are about all the things that need to get done around the house. Sometimes it’s necessary; life is just crazy busy and everyone is in survival mode and anything you don’t keep at the forefront will simply fall by the wayside and go undone. Other times I have to wonder…what are we running from? What are we keeping at bay with our litany of lists. What are we not allowing the space to grow and develop naturally.
I think we let our productivity kill our creativity. I just googled it. It’s not a novel concept at all, but again, allowing myself the brain space to think about this stuff is apparently leading me to a lot of “revelations” that should be fairly common knowledge.
The push for productivity is a social construct that we have allowed to invade every corner of our lives. I could go on about the capitalist machine and how even this ridiculous manipulation of the clock was designed to somehow give us more productive hours, but what’s more distressing is the way that many of us feed into that focus in our personal lives. It’s not just our partnership conversations that can get mired in the daily to do list. Think about how we catch up with friends. “What have you been up to lately? How’s work? What have you been doing? ” What if instead we asked about what’s really been inspiring us? Or what adventures we’ve been going on? Or if we must plan, let’s plan what our next joint adventure could be! What if, at the end of the day, instead of siting down with our partners and going through all the things we did and all the things that still need to be done, we brainstormed ideas that could make our family lives better? Or made a point to discuss our latest crazy theories or philosophies? Or fantasized about our next vacation?
There are those of us that are already doing many of these things, and I couldn’t applaud you more. As a society, I think we’ve let our desire for productivity subsume our humanity. How revolutionary would it be for us to shift the focus to reclaiming that in all aspects of our lives?
I think it’s obvious that this wasn’t the post I set out to write this morning, but let me attempt to bring it back around. You may be seeing a little less of me as I intend to continue to let my creativity take over my morning hour so I can see what comes out of it. Ultimately it may lead to me being more productive. It may lead to these writing projects actually seeing the light of day and maybe even a publisher’s desk. In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. How can we find the balance? How do we produce what is needed but keep the creative juices flowing and, more importantly, keep our personal and collective humanity at the forefront?