let’s catch up …maybe

These last few weeks have been pretty hectic. Everything’s a bit of a blur. I’ve been doing a lot of overtime at work because of this new arrangement in place involving other hospitals. (Can’t say too much, of course, because of privacy reasons or whatever.) I just worked six consecutive days – some of which were 11-12 hour days – and I am quite exhausted, but also not. I think I’ve just been running on adrenaline all week because I only had a total of maybe 3 cups of coffee and one cup of tea the whole week (and the most recent two beverages were probably unnecessary anyway).

Well, maybe we’ll call it adrenaline and fear/panic. There have been many times these last few weeks when I’ve felt like I was working as if my life depended on it. It’s like a fear of death (i.e. consequences) or fear of God (i.e. management – except I’m not really afraid of management; they’ve been very supportive).

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meditations – superfluity

Of all the lessons, revelations, advice and guiding principles that I’ve gotten from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations there’s probably one that’s been most influential. Well, I actually hesitate to say that because I don’t always follow it, and because I’ve taken so much from reading the book that it’s really hard to pinpoint which one singular passage I think about the most; but if I had to choose one, this would be it:

Most of what we say and do is unnecessary: remove the superfluity, and you will have more time and less bother. … And the removal of the unnecessary should apply not only to actions but to thoughts also: then no redundant actions either will follow.
– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4, Chapter 24

temps perdu & retrouvé

Yesterday I went to my usual book store to buy a copy of Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. I’d been reading a copy I borrowed from the library, but, having finished reading it on Saturday night, I felt strongly compelled to buy my own copy because I just knew I needed this book in my own collection.

Sadly, there was nothing but an empty space on the shelf where it might have been, and I left the store empty-handed.

Perhaps it was not meant to be… or perhaps I’ll just go search through other book stores until I find it. Maybe I’ll never re-read it in its entirety, but I feel like there are parts that I’ll most probably like to revisit at some point in my life. If nothing else, I feel like it’ll be comforting to have a copy of my own, easily accessible in my home. Sort of like a salve in a literary first aid kit.

Anyway, as you probably gathered from the above paragraphs, and possibly also from other posts in which I’ve mentioned A Tale for the Time Being, I really, really like this book.

sixteen

At the end of last year, I wrote a post about my 2015 goals, and how I did reasonably well with them, and about what I wanted to carry over to, or aim for, in 2016. You can go and find that post if you want, but I’m not linking to it from this post because I realised that I didn’t really try very hard at these “goals” this year.

last year (#3)

This year has been huge. I mean HUGE. And in a good way.

I almost forgot about my “last year” post series. Basically, around this time in 2014 and 2015, I wrote posts reflecting on what I would/wouldn’t change about my life if I had just one year left to live. I’m essentially contemplating how I’d like to spend my “last year” of life. My priorities didn’t seem to have changed much from 2014 to 2015, but this year’s post might be different…

79 and counting

I feel like there’s been a resurgence of posts on my Reader this last week compared to the weeks leading up to the end of the year. This is not a bad thing; it makes me smile, like seeing a familiar face again. I mean, after all, I wouldn’t be following blogs that I don’t want to read, right?

This afternoon, I caught up on some blog reading. I spent almost two hours reading blogs, and I’m kind of wondering if that’s a bit much. Granted, there were about three days’ worth of posts to read from various bloggers, and I’m not exactly a fast reader, but two hours seems like a long time. I could have watched a movie in that time.

Just checked my Reader, and it tells me that I’m currently following 79 sites. To be fair, though, I scrolled through part of the list quickly, and there are a lot that I don’t even remember because they haven’t posted anything in so long. I’m kind of wondering if I should unsubscribe from these dormant blogs, since it’s kind of pointless to follow them; or if I should just leave it as is, since they’re not posting anything anyway (but might resume posting one day!) Well, I’m feeling a bit lazy tonight, so it’s probably going to be the latter option.

I’ve already been limiting my Facebook time, so maybe the next step is limiting my blog-viewing time too. But this means I’ll have to be more selective about what I decide to read, and I don’t know if I’m ok with missing out on good content because I’m supposedly time-poor, or should be doing other things (what other things??)

Theoretically, though, I should have more free time this year. My CPD and reading goals are lower, and I’m not attempting to write a book. (Side note: reading goal is probably not going that well, seeing as I haven’t done any reading these last two days, and I’m only on page twenty-something of David Copperfield.)

The question then, perhaps, is ‘Do I want to reallocate this loose concept of “extra free time” into blogging?’ Maybe I should just reallocate it to reading my books…

Something else that I’ve been doing more and more of in recent-ish times is listening to music – either on the radio or on my phone/computer. I’m almost always doing something else while listening to music, but I suddenly feel more productive (and less like I’m wasting time) if I have some music on (irrespective of whether I’m actually, really productive or not).

What else is great, though, is when a song I really like comes on, and I pretty much just stop what I’m doing, and just listen to it. Something so simple, but it really is great to know that I have that luxury of time. That would be a good enough use of my free time, right? I wouldn’t consider that a waste.