Losing Sight of the Good Stuff

To a certain extent, I've removed a lot of the fun from my life on purpose. I don't mean that to say that I don't have fun or don't have an enjoyable life, but I spend a lot of my time focusing on "productive" activities and what's an efficient or effective use of my time instead of simply enjoying whatever it is I'm doing. If something is not productive in some way, then it's a waste of time. That's been my frame of mind in my adult life and it's been slowly hurting me.

When I first moved to Tacoma, I was faced with a new realization that my adult life and "grown-up" job leaves me a lot less time than graduate school did. After work, I have 5 hours of usable time before I am in bed preparing for the next day. Compared to my previous 16 hours of usable time when I was in graduate school and not occupied by a set work schedule, this was a huge change of pace.

I find myself now wanting to spend the majority of my time being productive. This could mean either exercising, practicing music, or in a faith-development scenario. These are all good things, even great things, but they're not always fun. Forcing myself to practice or exercise takes it from the realm of being a fun activity to being a chore.

I'd compare this shift to the deconstruction of a smoothie. When you are making a healthy smoothie at home, the most popular ingredients are not only spinach and kale for green leafy vegetables, but also any sort of berry, bananas, and yogurt to make it not only healthy but tasty. When you start breaking these things down, yogurt and berries are still good, but not even as good as the vegetables. Have you tasted kale by itself, though? It's not necessarily my favorite food, unless I'm really in the mood for construction paper.

What's happened in my life is a deconstruction of this smoothie. I force myself to eat nothing but kale and spinach because that's what the "healthy" choice is. If it weren't for the berries, though, or the pizza or the french fries in our lives, we may not enjoy eating at all. In the same sense, I've removed "unproductive" things from my life, like watching movies, because they seem like an inefficient use of time. If I'm watching a movie, I'm not reading or practicing or exercising, so it must be a waste of quality time. But how am I supposed to enjoy LIVING if I'm not indulging in the berries and yogurt that makes the spinach palatable?

It's time to get selfish, take time to myself, watch movies, have an interesting conversation with a friend, or just read an article about sports. Either way, it's time to bring back the imagination that's been missing from my real world life.

Recharging

Sometimes life gets really complicated and you just have to stop, breathe, and let it pass you by a bit. Over the past few weeks I've been bombarded with stressors and priorities that have done nothing but made me unsettled. I struggle with wanting to use my time at work effectively and get overwhelmed with things I want to accomplish. I get home and want to use my free time productively to read, learn, practice music, write music, write blogs, or something else of benefit. While the purpose of this motivation is beautiful, it is incredibly difficult to use energy if you don't have it.

In the end, I'm learning that I need to take time to kick back and relax in order to make other time fruitful. The most important things will be completed somehow. Those things that aren't as important will fade to the bottom of the priority list. Creatively, the best results come when you follow inspiration instead of a schedule. Last week I wrote verses for songs for the first time in months after expecting to make a lot more time to do so in this season of my life. I didn't plan to write a blog today, yet here I am.

Following your heart is the only way to make things happen. Sometimes your heart leads to the pen. Sometimes it leads to the couch. Either way, we all need to follow it a bit to make sure we're balancing life in a way that's beneficial in the long-run. As long as we're not spending every day on the couch, things will be alright.