I am really feeling what it means to use my time wisely. It is obvious at the end of the day that there are so many time chunks I’ve wasted on “pointless” things. Yet, it’s more like it can be pointless depending on the lens we decide to view things. The time I spend rewatching an old movie with my brother may be somewhat a waste cause there is no metric we can measure to see any growth there. But rather, the time and moments I share with him during this chunk of time are something that builds itself whether I actively think about it or not. Could be simply cope, but I believe that even these moments of just having fun and sharing these moments are worth it when I’ve decided to commit the time to it.

What I am trying to point out is that I could have spent that time learning more Japanese or writing my visual novel. That I actively chose something that doesn’t necessarily progress my goal directly, but perhaps progresses something more subtle (this word is going to be stamped on my head at this rate), like a intangible bond with my sibling. Am I stupid?

No, I just need to be accepting of the choice I consciously made.

I think this is where the idea of balance comes into play. That you need to allocate time for each of these things that you deem important. While on a macro level I understand this concept, I don’t fully apply this on a micro level within my own life. I have since abandoned schedules for anything I do outside of mandatory stuff like events, work, or really obligations. It seems to me that if the thing is compelling or that I have deemed it compelling to me in the moment, I will simply do it. I will commit a large amount of my time towards whatever I feel compelled to do.

What is annoying is that the seemingly conscious choice can be highjacked by self perceived identity or internal fears that have taken hold within my mind. I like live streaming and I do it because I enjoy it. I like that expressing myself live helps me slowly better understand my own thoughts. However, the practice often gets side tracked by my tendency to use this time as a distraction from the work I must do for my greater self. All these things I enjoy doing slowly get twisted to a point where I’m realizing the behaviour itself can be detrimental when not done in the correct moment and context for my own life in this current moment.

All of this yap to say that it is helpful to be self aware and understand for myself the choices I make with what I choose to do with the seemingly long, but potentially tragic short amount of time I and that we all have. But that’s just the thing, I could argue a more radical approach in that you have enough time, but in the sense that you only have the current present moment. The infinitesimal moment of the here and now where you can decide how you interpret your own past and what you define for your own future. That you need to simply be what it is you choose to be.

I will admit though, it is no easy feat in this day and age. The idea that the modern digital age is designed to distract you is one that has grown in more weight for me recently. So many things that span from absolutely peak to the most mediocre slop imaginable. It becomes problematic in the sense that we spend all of our time consuming these things instead of attempting to challenge ourselves to become something more or more literally, create something new.

There’s practically an infinite amount of content out there, but at the same time, not enough of it.

I think it all links back to time. A crude analogy I can think of is how the game Dead by Daylight is designed to work. The survivors have the objective to survive and escape the killer, ideally through the completion of generators so that you and the rest of the group can make it out alive. However, there’s all sorts of ways to spend the time you have to progress the objective in your own way. Like stalling the killer in a chase or setting up boons to help the team. But because not everyone is adept at analyzing the information available to them or they insist on playing a singular way, you will often find that a ton of time is wasted on stuff that truly doesn’t complete or benefit the objective.

That’s what it feels like in modern society at times for me. There’s so many things I can do to progress my own objective, yet to focus on one is almost impossible when there’s all sorts of situations that distract or stop me. I failed to mention the other side of the game where the killer is trying to stop the survivors from completing their objective. That’s because I feel it’s not so much as a singular person, but a whole entity that’s doing its best to prevent you from escaping. But unlike the entity I describe in this analogy, the distractions and thought patterns that are presented to us in all sorts of media and structures affect our brains not so obviously.

So where does that leave me?

In practice, it means that at any given time, I need to be at least somewhat aware of my options and context I am in. Then, without taking so much time ruminating on the possible decisions, to make a choice to the best of my ability and work on it. While I work on what I’ve decided, that I am actively trying to be attentive to how I am progressing and take this information I am finding within these moments towards the next decision to be made after.