I haven’t taken time in a long while to reflect on life using this blog. Some of it amounts to performance anxiety, some of it is about not making the time, and the rest is fear. The fear that stopping to reflect on things will mean actually having to face reality, emotion, and pain, rather than pushing them away.
Yesterday was a somewhat odd day. We had a power cut at work, but rather than calling it quits and going home, the day failed in stages. First we waited to see if the power came back; next, waited for lunch; waited for news; waited for a best plan. The power went off around ten, we left the office at two to work from home. By the time I got home at 2:30 the power to the servers had also gone, but with power estimated to return at 3:30 I hung on for another hour and a half, had a shower and watched Buffy.
If I’d known in advance that I couldn’t work yesterday I could have done so any other things. I have website work to do, I could have done some strength training, updated my blog, played GTA V, read, napped etc.
Which got me to thinking about wasted opportunities. Waiting is so frequent in life, and can easily be wasted time. And I “waste” a lot of my own time anyway, as I’ve blogged about before. I get into grooves of watching Netflix to unwind, when I could do so many of the other things I rarely make time for.
A discussion yesterday reminded me about The Gifts Of Imperfection, which I’ve gone through a couple of times and have been meaning to revisit. In particular, the parts about how it’s easier to numb ourselves to what we’re feeling than to feel it, but how learning to feel brings rewards to the positive parts of life. My particular numb-ers are food, Netflix and alcohol. Yes, alcohol has come back into my life. And I’ve been careless with it again, and it’s becoming a crutch, again.
So if there is a point to this post beyond my rambling, I think it’s this: the times I spend waiting might be useful for reflection and unpacking of my inner self. I think it’s worth a try, anyway.
