Rambling through Silence

RAMBLING THROUGH SILENCE

If a blog falls flat in the blogsphere and nobody is reading it anyway, does it make an impression? One of the first piece of advice was to write these bits at a slow enough pace to grow accustomed to producing them. In the past month, I have seen more of them start on my tablet of paper than finish on my computer screen. If I am my audience, do these need to satisfy me before I post them? Maybe I should try to write a ramble instead of an engineered “essay with a purpose”. If I am the only critic (and censor) of my blog writing, perhaps it is time to give that part of me a week (or more) off.

Setting out on a new pathway, hoping for an adventure, an amusement, or merely an improvement of one's surroundings, seems like an easy task to me. I often treat it as too easy, for only after I am heading down that path do I acknowledge I have left without a plan or destination in mind. Too much preparation would delay too long, setting my curiosity in harness where it would grow listless. But the kick of curiosity at the onset is unlikely to last as motivation beyond the first half dozen turns. Will some shiny new thing be discovered soon enough to spur me further, or sideways, to continue my exploration? Reaching the finish of the path (for underprepared me), in contrast, seems quite difficult – will abandoning it have real consequences?

Many of these journeys are quite trivial – armchair exercises to flex the sinews of my mind – and equally inconsequential in the events of the world around me. If the path fails to reach a recognizable destination, I am transported back to where I began with only the “waste” of time and efforts to account in the balance sheet of my life's production. If I treat myself gently in this callout for underachievement, who else will be any harsher?

I have become a practitioner of (very shallow) increment planning, if not also its victim. Many people are, I think, but once upon a time I did not so categorize myself. While I see grand plans about me and my own dreamy speculations about possible projects brainstorm future unlikelihoods, usually my preparation are merely enough to seek an approach before my first toe-test of the waters. Whereas once I was scoffed for the time I took to discuss goals and specifications for projects I was employed to develop (to the point that I abandoned that career (initiating my current path)), now I work piecemeal on scraps of ideas, seeing if anything lays beneath the small stones I overturn that might interest others. Perhaps I find enough to entice me to dig a bit deeper on my own, even in the absence of their attentions.

And I supposed many times I pity myself for the pettiness and lack of scope and goal in what I do now, especially at my job. I will turn to my home and leisure life and propose to myself that I will find worthy accomplishments to be achieved there. But habits of mind are hard to break. Complacence with decades of family life producing a calm and cozy home and grown children does not cry out for renovation projects. Where do I find some long term goals to which to plot my course for many long hours to come? Do I have the attention span remaining to make the trip worthwhile? Who benefits beyond myself? And if nobody else benefits, is it really worthwhile for myself alone? And so the vision of worth diminished, the allocation of resources are minimized by the investor (me) until better returns can be offered. Give me some preliminary results or I might be well sit upon my resources (time) and twittled them away in my own amusement.

When comfort and un-need dominate one's life, what can provide an outlet for gobbling up the unencumbered resources? Money can be be saved for the future, but not time. There is less time ahead in my life than behind. As a certainty, that has probably always been true – the past will continue to exist without shrinkage, but the future is, at best, a promise which can be broken in a moment. The “time is money” adage holds little truth for me. Yes, I can convert some of my time to money (and others are more efficient in doing so), and as a volunteer I can save somebody or some organization some money. But “time is sleep (rest), refreshment (fun), and improvement (investment)” seems equally true and important to life. There is a puritanism, to which I was indoctrinated, that “time is wasted” if not spent on worth. Oh, to escape our indoctrination!

So, with the needs of family, employer, and community met, how does one make the time spent on hobbies have value? Outside its meaning as a form of relaxation, the hobby might be volunteer labor (to further meet community needs, for example). A collection might be thought to be an investment in education or possible financial speculation (if delusional value is allowed); I do that with “free time”. A hobby that produces something (knitting, carpentry, blog writing) might have worth if anyone wants or uses the product. Fitness hobbies seem to derive value from increasing health, thus life, and thus more time to figure out how to use. But fun and mental health might be enough excuse for hobbies – even allowing such amusements as writing a blog as this.