Speechless
My Todos are the Microplastics of my Soul
I often go back and forth on how I feel about big, important things. Some days I get very angry at golf, thinking it is the absolute worst sport. Between its exclusivity – it is definitely NOT a peoples’ sport like soccer or basketball – and all of the land, water, and labor it wastes, golf defiantly stands against most of what I value. Ridding the world of golf and especially golf courses would make the world a better place instantly.
But also, meh. My dad liked golf. It’s nice. You go for a long walk.
Whatever.
Also – look at all the plastic and how it is fundamentally (both literally and figuratively) destroying our lives. I’ve tried to consciously avoid plastic in my daily life and it’s just impossible. Everything around me is plastic and wrapped in plastic and then I just put the plastic in another plastic bag that I put into a large plastic box that gets picked up and taken away to be hidden from us so we can go back to using little plastic cards to buy more plastic and start the whole terrible cycle over again.
But the inflection moment for bringing plastic into our lives has long gone. I’m not saying we can’t change – just that, for now, plastic is already everywhere. Want to feel terrible about yourself and the world we’ve created? Just go read a story like The Harsh Truth About Microplastics and feel absolutely paralyzed by this truly awesome cacophony of long-term destruction we’ve wrought against ourselves.
I honestly don’t know what to do or say about it.
It’s boom or bust emotionally over here: one day I’m on top of the world with great love and friendship and creativity and peace in my life; the next day shitty people just get on being shitty, except now they’re in power and are wreaking havoc on our hard fought freedoms and rights.
I feel bullied into silence.
Where is our punk rock movement?
Or are we past the point where single collective actions can make a difference? Do boycotts even work anymore?
I really don’t want to mention AI here but I’ll just say that at least the kids see through the bullshit of AI which is reaching fever pitch as those companies realize that maybe it isn’t all that they claimed it was. If you can’t sell the kids your bullshit then you’ve lost the long-game for sure.
My daughter is briefly home from college before starting her summer job, and my own youthful optimism is reflected in her general do-nothing attitude. The world is falling apart and she’s just watching Taskmaster.
But also she’s 21 and she should go out and enjoy life, meet people, go on adventures, and not be burdened by all the chaos and destruction that we are giving her generation. She’s an honor student and smart and beautiful and can do anything she sets her mind to. She should absolutely go be a camp counselor far from home and create her own brave, new world, forge a new path.
Who am I to tell her what to do with her future? She’s far more capable and successful and engaged and thoughtful than I ever was at her age.
Really I should just shut the hell up and go back to working on my novel.
Like I said, boom or bust.
No End in Sight
This is not an essay with a clear goal or set of recommendations in mind. I am only here to reflect the moment as I see it and hope this reflection gives you some aid or comfort.
I don’t want anything from you, at least not here, now. If you’ve read this far, then maybe you too feel similarly. It’s a weird, tough time out there for people with compassion.
I just watched this video about a different way to use a journal and it caught me unawares, showing me that my notebooks are mostly focused on productivity and to-do lists. They are not creative or art notebooks. They are just endless lists of shit I need to do.
My wife and I struggle a lot against the Endless To-do List. How can we build a creative life when everything is just about ticking off one more thing? This week, we have both a clogged shower (recurring problem) and a smelly carpet that needs replacing. This is home ownership, yes, but also it’s just one. more. fucking. thing.
It never ends – this to-do list.
But also, these to-do lists are how I’m here with you today. I was in a bad way for a long time, as my ADHD owned everything in my life. Yes, I’m super focused on organizing my days and weeks and months, but also I’m very competent and I get a lot of stuff done.
So the lists work for me.
What isn’t working for me, though, and what that video by Perry Daniels showed me, was that I need even more unstructured creative time in my life. Already I’m not playing any music and that definitely needs to be here.
Sitting in front of the window and looking at the trees is great, but after 15 minutes it feels like I’m wasting my time and not being productive, and
maybe that’s a sign that I need to do more of it.
I do also need a notebook that has nothing more than fanciful and fantastic ideas in it. And I need to spend more time there than in my to-do list. Are my to-do lists the microplastics of my soul?
Hm.
Maybe they are.
That which binds us might be the ticket to setting us free.
I, too, struggle with the subtle art of Nothing. I spent four days earlier this week housesitting at this amazing house with a beautiful garden and two mostly-awesome dogs. The true joy for me was when I sat in the hot tub (off the main bedroom; I make no illusions to the joy this brought me) and watched the trees sway around me while birds badgered one another for access to the bird feeders (guys! There's three of you and six birdfeeders! Calm down FFS!). By the end of my stay, I found more joy in the trees and birds than the hot tub; steaming water and bubbles aside, it was merely a vehicle to the Nothing.
Nothing gives clarity. Nothing frees the mind to just sit, breathe, and be. And with all that Nothing, I began to feel the desire to act, to do.
Perhaps we could all do with a little more Nothing so we can be a little more Something. To cross off the to-do, perhaps to also be punk rock, one beat at a time.
Thank you for sharing.