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I worked 1.5 entire days this week! Yeah, enough of that... time for another five-day weekend.
Today I spent lots of hours at Local Circus School, installing a truss with lots of other people. I like contributing and, having missed the big move into the space, am happy to now have memories of creating something there. It's fun to see it all messy, with people wearing shoes where they aren't usually allowed to, and it's fun to play with what is essentially a giant steel Lego kit.
I've been thinking a lot, a lot, a lot, about a whole bundle of related things. Identity (the noun) is one of them -- the way that what we do shapes us but doesn't define us; and who I am; and how much it is and isn't good for me to identify (the verb) with any number of situations, environments, activities, roles, mindsets. I don't have answers yet.
You are not your fucking khakis....
And I'm thinking about mindfulness, which I've found defined very nicely in a book I'm reading as "paying attention in a particular way -- on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally". I'm doing a lot of trying to pay attention to the sensory inputs of the present moment, in part to break an unwanted limerence and in part as an identity exercise. My understanding is that this repeated bringing attention back to the physical world is training me to control my attention better, even if I'm not (yet?) just sitting still and focusing on my breath. And it's an identity exercise because I am saying "this is me, I am here and not in the situation I'm constructing in my head, this is what's in front of me."
I don't know if I'll post more about this sort of thing or not. Might depend on whether there is interest. I don't mind naming these two things as areas of inquiry though.
Today I spent lots of hours at Local Circus School, installing a truss with lots of other people. I like contributing and, having missed the big move into the space, am happy to now have memories of creating something there. It's fun to see it all messy, with people wearing shoes where they aren't usually allowed to, and it's fun to play with what is essentially a giant steel Lego kit.
I've been thinking a lot, a lot, a lot, about a whole bundle of related things. Identity (the noun) is one of them -- the way that what we do shapes us but doesn't define us; and who I am; and how much it is and isn't good for me to identify (the verb) with any number of situations, environments, activities, roles, mindsets. I don't have answers yet.
You are not your fucking khakis....
And I'm thinking about mindfulness, which I've found defined very nicely in a book I'm reading as "paying attention in a particular way -- on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally". I'm doing a lot of trying to pay attention to the sensory inputs of the present moment, in part to break an unwanted limerence and in part as an identity exercise. My understanding is that this repeated bringing attention back to the physical world is training me to control my attention better, even if I'm not (yet?) just sitting still and focusing on my breath. And it's an identity exercise because I am saying "this is me, I am here and not in the situation I'm constructing in my head, this is what's in front of me."
I don't know if I'll post more about this sort of thing or not. Might depend on whether there is interest. I don't mind naming these two things as areas of inquiry though.
