![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Taking Stock
Aug. 31st, 2014 02:13 pmI've moved away from Bloomington, left behind my job as a barista, completed EuroTrip 2014 (photos forthcoming), and now it's time for me to take stop and decide how to move forward.
I've moved back in with my parents, which I feel...actually really happy about, despite the fact that pop culture portrays this as a flashing neon sign of loserdom. It's okay, pop culture, I think you're kind of a loser too.
I've lived alone for the last three years, and I am so, so, so very over it. It was, for me, isolating and draining, the kind of draining where I spend three hours mindlessly browsing the internet, not because I want to - because I don't want to, I recognize even as I do it that this is a waste of time and I would be far happier taking a walk or reading or writing my 1000 words or doing anything - but because I lack the willpower to tear myself away from the mindless entertainment.
It's not that I was magically procrastination free when I lived with other people (and it's not like this is how I spent all my time in Bloomington: I wrote two novellas in the last six months, I have accomplished things!), but that particular variety of mental exhaustion is not something I suffered either in my hometown or at college, where I procrastinated by doing things I actually enjoy. Like walks and reading and the parts of the internet that I find engaging (but can put down without feeling like I'm swimming my way out of hypnosis). (I also enjoy writing, but it is also, often, the thing I am procrastinating on. I enjoy it when it's going well, but it isn't always.)
Living alone wasn't the only contributing factor here - I think my unhappiness at grad school sort of permeated my feelings about Bloomington, even after I was no longer in grad school - but still.
***
On a related note, three weeks on the road with severely limited internet has dramatically demonstrated just how much time I've been wasting on it. I already knew that intellectually, but there's a difference between knowing something and between demonstrating it to yourself by and going to a foreign country, with all the little fiddly getting food and shelter and transportation arrangements that travel demands, doing 6+ hours of sightseeing every day...and getting just as much writing and far more reading done than when I was at home.
So. Less internet time, more everything else. I don't think this will affect my time on LJ, because I've never felt that's a waste; but definitely less time mindlessly frittering. I have books to read and books to write, walks to take and dinners to make, and all those things will make me happier than scrolling endlessly through pinterest.
Also a job to find. Meep!
I've moved back in with my parents, which I feel...actually really happy about, despite the fact that pop culture portrays this as a flashing neon sign of loserdom. It's okay, pop culture, I think you're kind of a loser too.
I've lived alone for the last three years, and I am so, so, so very over it. It was, for me, isolating and draining, the kind of draining where I spend three hours mindlessly browsing the internet, not because I want to - because I don't want to, I recognize even as I do it that this is a waste of time and I would be far happier taking a walk or reading or writing my 1000 words or doing anything - but because I lack the willpower to tear myself away from the mindless entertainment.
It's not that I was magically procrastination free when I lived with other people (and it's not like this is how I spent all my time in Bloomington: I wrote two novellas in the last six months, I have accomplished things!), but that particular variety of mental exhaustion is not something I suffered either in my hometown or at college, where I procrastinated by doing things I actually enjoy. Like walks and reading and the parts of the internet that I find engaging (but can put down without feeling like I'm swimming my way out of hypnosis). (I also enjoy writing, but it is also, often, the thing I am procrastinating on. I enjoy it when it's going well, but it isn't always.)
Living alone wasn't the only contributing factor here - I think my unhappiness at grad school sort of permeated my feelings about Bloomington, even after I was no longer in grad school - but still.
***
On a related note, three weeks on the road with severely limited internet has dramatically demonstrated just how much time I've been wasting on it. I already knew that intellectually, but there's a difference between knowing something and between demonstrating it to yourself by and going to a foreign country, with all the little fiddly getting food and shelter and transportation arrangements that travel demands, doing 6+ hours of sightseeing every day...and getting just as much writing and far more reading done than when I was at home.
So. Less internet time, more everything else. I don't think this will affect my time on LJ, because I've never felt that's a waste; but definitely less time mindlessly frittering. I have books to read and books to write, walks to take and dinners to make, and all those things will make me happier than scrolling endlessly through pinterest.
Also a job to find. Meep!
