I spent the past weekend in absolute satisfaction. In Flow. Time rushed by, yet I was immersed in each moment. I cooked multiple meals with my roommate (Indian bread rolls and Bombay sandwiches), started and finished season 1 of Ted Lasso, played tennis, and watched the Come From Away musical. I even had time to run some errands, draw, zoom call a twitter friend, and redecorate my apartment a little.
What felt like a pleasing weekend now also feels bloated. Kinda like when you eat too many sweets in one sitting. It feels a bit empty now too, like in the same vein wanting some solid food after all those sweets but not being able to stomach it yet.
I love being in the moment. Enjoying an experience or a show. Feeling; especially that tight-in-the-chest, choked up feeling a show like Ted Lasso makes you feel. But as the moment ends, as I fall out of Flow, a part of me looks back and tries to make sense of the time that’s passed, to assign some narrative to it. And present-me views that recently-gone me with a mix of emotions. There’s satisfaction, but it’s only in part. There’s a bittersweet feeling too, like yearning and regret and hope all rolled into one.
I have a book that’s been sitting on my shelf for months now that I want to read but the title is self-explanatory enough that the topic has been able to stick itself in my brain anyway and not let go. It’s called Amusing Ourselves to Death, and it comes to mind here.
Did I spend this weekend resting? Did I spend it wasting away on the couch? Like with all things, the real answer is probably somewhere in the middle. I don’t want to beat myself up about it. There is a time for rest and relaxation, and it’s important to get adequate rest! But also: did I get anything, anything lasting out of watching 7 hours of TV? When I also want to read a book, or write, or practice some games.
This weekend is all of that – it’s living proof of the gap between my revealed preferences and my stated preferences. Makes me wonder why. I could attribute it to myself, my environment, work, my roommate, how easy it is to pull up Netflix, how good TV has become. How quickly I can get distracted by something playing in the background and become absorbed in a show I knew nothing about a few minutes prior (this is literally how I got into season 8 of The Blacklist).
And as I’m writing the paragraph above, two words come to mind: blame, and forgiveness. What an interesting frame to default to. Forgiveness implies some wrongdoing; forgiveness for what? For “falling into temptation”? Or meta: for beating myself up about something that I shouldn’t be beating myself up about? (Or more meta: for viewing this as something I should or shouldn’t be doing?)
And yet! And yet, after aaaall of that pacing and pondering: I write most of this piece at the end of the same weekend, at 12AM on Sunday night. And I feel good about it, about having done some writing after all, and about what I’ve written. Maybe that’s just how it goes sometimes.
was in bed about to sleep then had a brainworm that was trying to claw its way out
— Billy is wrangling ghouls (@billyisyoung) October 25, 2021
hopped on the pc and dumped 600 words down onto the page. brain is empty now, going to sleep and edit it all tomorrow. glad I believed in the brainworm
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