What is this peace?

 Why do I feel so peaceful lately?
I think it's not a matter of anything specific that I've done, so much as things that I've stopped doing.

I stopped worrying about if I had enough to get by. The worry is gone, I still get by.

I stopped worrying as much about what others thought of me, or how they view me. That anxiety is gone. I still wear pants when I go outside though.

I stopped trying to think about if I was doing enough, or keeping up with 'my hobbies' and 'my work'. Now I just do whatever I'm pulled toward. Progress is made, but I'm not disappointed in how much or how little, because I've not really set an expectation for myself. I just do things. It doesn't matter if they get done, or how well. Though I still cook my food all the way, wash my hands and brush my teeth properly.

Conversation is Everything

 I once had a friend over twice my age who would do nothing but talk. Sometimes I wished he would stop, but now that it's all over I mostly appreciate that I sat and listened. I listened mainly because he was old and knew so many things, some of them even turned out to be true. I felt because I was young and I seemed to be one of the only people listening that I had to listen, that I was to learn all the secrets no one else was patient enough to hear. It did not occur to me at the time that beneath that, I was happy to listen, joyful for the company, pleased that we had a proper and good exchange of respect, and took turns(albeit with the balance tipped in his favor) to listen to one another and work through one another's thoughts.

Beyond survival, the root point of having other people around I think is this gestalt; to talk and enjoy one another; to let each other gently tug on one another's perspectives, widening our conception of the world and thought itself. Digging through concepts half remembered, mashing them like legos into creations sometimes new, and sometimes simply comforting and familiar. Conversation is everything. Now that I am a bit older, though I am still half his age, and will be for a bit longer before he finishes out the last leg of his decline(his mind went first, his body soon to follow, as these things go), I think talking is all I'm here for.

Instead of talking I write. It'll last a bit longer. It reaches so much further than my voice. I don't have to look the reader in the eye the next day when I say something too offensive or tender. But there will still be a mingling of thought-- yours and mine. In the more immediate sense, writing also allows me to have a conversation with myself, both in the immediate act of writing, and in the looking back over old writing, synthesizing it into new form as current thought weaves and grows from the old like a vine strangling a great oak tree.

Back to the Mud

 Coffee over bedrest. Nicotine over natural pleasure. Darkness and smoke and fresh boiled bean. Burning the candle of lifespan from both ends. And then the withdrawals when a dose is missed, like cutting a wedge out of things. What drives a person to this end? Stress and lack of sleep-- the very things substances seek to replace or soothe, but they only delay and twist, putting it all off until later, later. And then much later, the smoker, the alcoholic, the straight-edger, the saint, the monk, the 'sober for forty years', all are gone. Back to the mud, no matter what happens.

Bad Starts and Bad Days

 Sometimes I wake up and I can tell just by how I feel that it is going to be a bad start. Maybe even a bad day. During times like this I feel I struggle to balance maintaining myself, managing depression, and maintaining work. All of these things must be done to some degree. The important thing, I think, is to shift my own expectations of myself. I cannot expect the same amount of work being done on a bad day, that I may have done on a good day.

Today is its own day, with its own rhythm and flow. This does not mean I should give up on trying to do all the things I should do, indulging in only what little I want to do, necessarily. The important thing is to get a feel for my own mind and how things are today, and to flow with that, rather than trying to push against it. If it's a slow day, so be it. If I only get so much done(or so little!) so be it. It's okay for it to be a slow day. Or a 'stare at the monitor' counts as 'work' day, if that's all I can manage.

But what if life or my obligations demand more of me than I feel I can give? Well, that's why it's a bad start, isn't it? Something unpleasant has already got me down. To that all I can say is muddle through it until things get  better. If it won't kill you, then you'll get through it. In life, almost no mistakes are literally fatal.

First Post and The Watercourse Way

 My current level of fatigue is the deciding factor in what I do in a given moment, on a given day. This is not something I'd even considered as a possible framework when I was younger: I had all the energy in the world, and a variety of factors, parents and such, propping me up and keeping me from harm. How the years have gone by. I've fallen in with many people and gotten by in all sorts of ways, but the amount of energy I have left to start things is now, on average, drastically smaller than the number of things I wished I'd done. Look at me talking like I'm old. This is only the start, I imagine. I'm only 31 now.

I've just finished my first readthrough of The Watercourse Way by Alan Watts (and Al Chung-Hang Huang) and have enjoyed it enough to add to my lists to read again sometime. I feel like I'm holding only half a book with it, partly because I know that Watts died before he finished it. I do not think the book offers any easy answers: though it does steer decidedly toward Contemplative Taoism and away from the more mystic/psychic power/immortality focused Taoism. (Hisen Taoism, apparently). I think there's quite a bit to be teased out of the book, and Watts makes so many references to other writings that it's quite the tangled web to explore.

I don't think I'll discuss what I've started reading next, just in case I shoot myself in the foot by abandoning it later. I'll just write reviews as I finish things. But don't be fooled: I don't always finish a book. Even Watercourse Way... I started it in March, got through the first few chapters, then put it down until a few days ago. Then slammed through the latter half of it today. :P