Sometimes we are committed to things like “keeping up with tech news” if we are addicted to say “Tech Crunch”. Or I might be committed to “being informed about liberal political news” if I always keep up with "the Huffington Post"… etc. which are both a commitment to a kind of "mental masturbation" if you pardon the phrase. More pervasively, I could be committed to ensuring I always feel the lack of control I grew up with; So, I cultivate actions and attitudes that stifle me and limit me to a chronic lack of fulfillment.
My recent realization about, and newly found reduced commitment to work, left me with a lot more energy and freedom. So, I’d like to change my commitments.
No change to the following.
- Continue eating well
- Continue saving for retirement
- Continue tending to my place and routines
- Continue my casual reading
- Continue my blogging
- Continue attending my support group
- Continue keeping in touch with family and friends
- Continue tending to myself and my spirituality
- Continue breaking my routines and indulging every once in a while
- Continue exercising but limit to every other day. Sometimes I get carried away and think I should do it every day. It’s not like I ever act on it, but I’d like to ensure that I don’t give it more space than simply every other day and no back-filling if I miss.
- Continue working at my current job, but switch to strict hours (8-5), limit caring and stress during those hours, look professional, and allow for doing other things than what I’m good at. In other words, turn my work into a mere job I’m paid to do that I happen to secondarily enjoy, not my life or my career. It is not a career.
- Limit watching TV to 1 show a weekday and 2 movies a weekend day.
- Embrace and expect events. If friends want to go for dinners, vacation, trips, drives, movies… etc. or I find other events to attend… I’d like to go for it and embrace it and not consider that an impediment to other things. It is a new commitment.
- Eliminate reading blogs, news, and discussion forums. Move any remaining desire for that into occasional routine-breaking. I really don’t want to fill my free minutes with that. If I have a few free minutes I’d like to read passages from my books or better yet just let it be quiet and think and do nothing or tend to other things.
- Eliminate any active steps towards dating or romantic relationships. Move any remaining desire there into events that I occasionally initiate. This social activity is so exhausting to me. I think I finally would like to embrace the fact that most of the people I know and respect are either single or have always been single.
- I’d like to add a habit of trusting what the moment brings, what my skills provide, and the is-ness of my surroundings, feelings, circumstances and the like. Make whatever I’m in primary. And whatever I’m planning or projecting or thinking and remembering secondary.
- I’d like to add a firm and real commitment to Ecicpip. I’d like to take it more seriously and think of it more visibly and consider it more often. And just give it chunks of 30 minutes here and there and large chunks of my weekend. But I’d like to stop (completely stop) the moment I turn it into something else and examine that. The moment I feel it is a career alternative, a resume builder, a peers' showcase, a dreams fulfiller, a world savior, or even a life meaning creator… I’d like to stop immediately and do something (anything) else. It must be protected from that pollution, and god knows I have a lot of that.