Someone asked me the other day if I kept a diary, and my answer was the usual: I have a blog that I seldom update; I only do it when I’m inspired to write something; I use it to upload the songs I composed and recorded. I find it meaningless to pen down my thoughts.
And then I said something else: I don’t see a point in writing out my thoughts; I simply run through them in my head.
But I realized that in recent times I have less luxury of time to simply sit and think through the things that are on my mind. I’m constantly on the move, or at least busy with something else. I seem to be really preoccupied with things, but I don’t see anything done, at least nothing physical to show for. So where did my time go? Here’s a list of the things that I do (I tried to be honest I promise):
1) Sleep – Well we all do this don’t we? I average about 5-6 hours daily.
2) Shower/Toilet time/Preparing to head out – 45 minutes in total. This includes 2 showers, 1-2 ‘big ones’, and doing my hair.
3) Travelling – Average of 2-3 hours daily.
4) Meals – Average of 1 hour a day in total for all 3 meals.
5) Reading of academia – Quite a lot of time spent on this.
6) Randomly surfing the Net – Slightly lesser than reading of academia, which means a lot of time spent on this as well.
7) Watching shows – Average of 2 hours a day.
8) Praying and reading the Bible – I have to admit I’m doing much lesser of them these days, way lesser than Items 5, 6, and 7 individually.
9) Meeting up with people – Sometimes; ranging from 2 hours to as long as 3-4 hours per meet up maybe?
10) Playing the guitar – I do this on and off, and it could stretch to 1-2 hours each time.
Hmm.. Judging from the list of things that I do, I’m actually spending most of my time on things that do not necessarily result in any meaningful outcomes. At least reading of academia leads to work done in the form of essays and presentations. Surfing the Net and watching shows almost amount to nothing, if you consider doing video covers as meaningless activity. Maybe that’s why I have been feeling a little unaccomplished these days, and just a little dissatisfied with life as it is. I’ve been spending too little time with the one who matters the most – God. Instead, I have substituted that time for temporal and not entirely rewarding forms of recreation – surfing the Net and watching shows on my laptop. I guess it’s time for a change then. Practical steps would be:
1) Cutting down on watching shows on my laptop to a maximum of 1 hour a day.
2) Switching to doing something more meaningful immediately when I catch myself starting to serve the Net at random. (Concession – maximum of 1 hour a day for random surfing. I don’t exactly know how I’m going to monitor this but I suppose I will come up with a way. Maybe a stop clock or something, like those chess players.)
Alright, I think I’m done here for this post. So writing my thoughts down actually do help. I take back my words.
Until next time…
