Obligations, Shoulds, Unexamined Personal Expectations

One of the main things I’ve wanted from leaving my job is stronger ownership over my time. I am already pretty damn protective of my time to begin with and I’ve been skeptical of how much I can scrounge up from my new schedule.

Given the assault for attention that everyone finds themselves on the receiving end of it’s becoming increasing apparent to me how important discernment is to get to where one wants to go and to be happier along the way.

One clear case of this for me was three years ago when I was deciding whether I was going to start training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) or not. Right then I was a few years into doing Argentine Tango. I wasn’t enjoying Tango too much. Part of the reason why was that I wasn’t giving it enough of my attention to become any good at it. I hovered at a skill level which kept me frustrated and tainted each night I went out to practice. I knew BJJ would suffer the same fate if I started it right then without sacrificing anything else. So I willingly gave up Tango (for then at least) in order to start BJJ.

I knew I could have one but not both.

I like to believe that I’ve gotten better about being discerning since then. After being repeatedly encouraged to start climbing as a hobby I’ve been able to clearly say that BJJ is a priority of mine right now and that I’m unwilling to pick up another hobby at the expense of my enjoyment of BJJ.

These examples are big and easy to point to. The real war is much smaller.

I do my best to pay attention to how I use my phone. The most transparent way to see how I feel drawn to use it comes when I sit down on a toilet. Twitter, Facebook, compiling torrents of links that I swear I’ll read the whole thing of later, and much more come up with such a greater frequency. Often times I don’t even notice it happening. I sit down and a cascade of default behaviors and thumb swipes fire off without my active attention. I awaken in a daze minutes later and often feel either nothing or frustrated that I fell into that groove again.

I could not bring my phone into the bathroom but I don’t see that as a long term solution nor as a means of self-examination. Because I know that sitting on a toilet is a trigger for me I can willingly use it to see how I function in my default, asleep, short-term-gratification manners. Moments like these are invaluable because they illuminate my unconscious and can help me notice when I’m deflecting, avoiding, or numbing. If I can catch patterns of me doing that then I can try new things to construct a more engaging life.

This past Friday morning I sat on the toilet and almost immediately pulled up Twitter (@BenjaminLaCara if you care, I never post anything as of this writing). I found myself scrolling through my feed to get through it more than anything. I was done with the toilet but I wasn’t done with my feed and I felt close enough to finishing to warrant staying for a little bit longer.

“Getting through” something has been a tell that I’ve been paying attention to lately. It shoots up a red flag that helps me observe myself and be curious of others. There’s a sense of obligation baked into “getting through” something. Obligation to what and for who? Why should I do anything that I am doing just to get through or merely survive it? Is reading a book to “get through it” a book that’s worth reading? Even if it is, am I paying enough attention to learn anything from it or enjoy it? Almost always I’m not. How about finishing a series even though it’s not great but I’m half-way through? Drop it like it’s hot.

Am I a better person for finishing a book I didn’t like or watching a show I don’t care about? Is there some sort of hidden virtue in slogging through something I initially chose to do of my own volition? I don’t think there is.

Back to the toilet.

There is some value that I get from Twitter. When I looked at where that value comes from it became clear to me that literally 75% of my feed was a distraction from the parts I enjoyed (and the rest of my life for that matter). While not being willing to unfollow those accounts I did go through all of the people I follow and mute the ones that I don’t see bringing real, tangible value to me. My experience of Twitter has since drastically improved.

Not just that, my experience of MYSELF has improved.

I’m spending more time engaged in things I know I want to be engaged on. That energy of being engaged then spreads to my life outside of my phone. This is all much easier for me to see because I’m no longer at my job. When I would have a task to do that I found boring, confusing, or intimidating I was much more likely to turn to my phone or YouTube. This was done in very much the same way as sitting on a toilet. “Oh, did I just feel something unpleasant? Time to salve with some phone time.”

Twitter, YouTube, podcasts, Facebook, whatever it is, it’s important to me that they are curated to serve me, not to have me serve them like a socially-isolated-mouse hitting a lever for cocaine. Culling Twitter down to five pages to follow has helped. Cutting down YouTube and podcast subscriptions will be different beasts. While I do that I’ll get to examine my desire to check boxes.

A freaky thing that comes from this, and one that is not lost on me as I write a blog, is how subscribing to things online often turns them into obligations. It’s as if subscribing to a channel or a show is writing a blank check for my attention. I realize that no obligation literally exists and there’s absolutely something there for me to investigate. When I unsubscribe there is a brief feeling of cultural FOMO or a fear that I’ll miss the one, perfect, helpful thing that would put my life in order. After that sensation there’s release, ease, peace; the boots of expectation and a shrinking time-horizon have both stepped off my throat. And that’s what I really want after all.

Isn’t it poetic that I keep using my phone and staying up on the things I follow when what I actually want, in the end, is the peace and ease of having nothing to answer to. Not that I don’t do anything or never collaborate with anyone, but that I don’t do anything because “I should.”

With that in mind, maybe the purging won’t be as difficult as I had thought.