So over the weekend, while I was being sick and contemplating how change comes from our actions and how those wise nuggets of information, those paradigm shifts on self improvement I've discovered through reading successful/famous people's blogs, New York Times bestselling self help books, listening to motivating TED talks have inspired me seemingly so profoundly, and made me feel at that moment fully lucid... haven't fundamentally changed me very much in the end.
And since that time, as I've been pulling slowly into recovery (from illness though I suppose it could be metaphorical), I've been watching my idle time carefully, time spent on youtube, time spent on facebook, time spent listening to music, time spent deciding what to do, time spent waiting for something or someone, time spent chatting but with nothing to say and cutting away at that somehow by finding something something to do, until all I'm doing is... doing something :) Washing my clothes, my dishes, shopping at the market, making phone calls, finding information on places to travel to online, reviewing chinese homework, meditating, napping, dancing to music (as opposed to just letting it wash over), writing blog posts. I have this feeling that because the world is changing, we need to manage that change by creating change of our own.
What's funny thing is that, after avoiding YouTube each time I visit it is that the nature of business their need for "consumers" makes it such that being idle is so attractive! I even want to watch ads they're so entertaining these days. But the thing I've realized recently is that the brain becomes what it does often. And if it spends most of it's time taking things in, it won't be good at producing much after a while. Anyways, I just want to keep my brain oriented toward action and creation. Oh, and just so no one is mistaken, conversations where there is nothing to say are not unfundamentally idle, but I think those are worthwhile for me when you actually feel like you're doing something.
