Hello, everybody, Que Tal? May has been a slow blogging month for me. Just taking it day by day, taking it slow, like a sloth. I've written a lot on the blog about time, how time seems to have different states; slow, fast, constant, stopped, nonexistent, perpetual. What does time feel like during COVID to you?
For me time seems to be in a vacuum. By that I mean that time seems to have slowed down exponentially, perhaps it's even stopped sometimes. Yes, things are happening in the world, more Americans dying and getting infected, for one thing, the biggest and most important story right now, but there's also our own small, yet still equally important personal lives, meager as they seem.
It's a given that those that get to work from home during COVID are privileged. Hell, I think I'm privileged because of the fact that I have enough money to take two months off from work. As a result, the last two months have been the slowest days of my entire life.
Now, is that good or bad, or is there neither praise nor blame attached? Well, it's good because I get to practice my skills, however meager in the nonexistent economy they may be; guitar playing, writing and reading literature. It's bad because all the extra free time conduces me to spend copious amounts of video game hours just messing around. On the other side of this spectrum, one could say that it doesn't matter much but obviously that's just a cop-out.
The best thing about lockdown during COVID for me other than the fact that I've been away from work for two months after having worked seven years straight with hardly any vacations is that I've been able to develop even more of an interior life. What am I talking referring to?
Interior life is the life you live inside yourself without others. Do you constantly need to be around other people more often than not? Are you uncomfortable with being alone in a room by yourself, doing nothing, in particular, just relaxing, perhaps reading or staring at a wall? Interior life can only be improved upon with you knowing that you don't need to be around other people all the time. You have to have alone time to gather your thoughts, energy, and focus on the tasks at hand, which is important to you and you only. Or are you constantly searching for that something, like an affirmation or anything else, to always be around other people for various reasons? This concept also applies to the online world as well. Think about how many people keep checking their notifications on social media apps all day. They do this because they get pleasure from seeing notifications, a shot of dopamine. If you want to develop the interior life you should not check your social media or smartphone notification apps all day. Put a limit on it.
Interior life isn't easy to develop. For me, it started with my solo guitar practice sessions, long reading sessions, and epic pug [pick up group] online gaming sessions. For you, it could develop in various ways that are more personable to you and your life.
In case I didn't explain clearly enough, the interior life is a sort of spiritual, not just a regular solo experience. Reading the news every day online is part of my interior life. When I read the news after I wake up in the morning, I feel a sense of urgency to see what all the news headlines are, and read them, and make my own assessments based on said articles. When I do this, I go into a flow state, a similar flow state I go into when I practice guitar; where time and space ceases to exist, and I enter a state of simply 'being,' the more you do these sorts of things, the more you develop this flow state, which will help you in nearly every aspect of your life.
One of the subtle ways of developing an interior life that has improved my friendships and relationships is that I know when to back away from people socially, to allow and give them space. When I'm in a setting where there are more than two people I know what questions to ask, when to lay out and listen, and when to let the others talk more so than myself. In short, it's improved my social skills a lot as well as giving me a guiding light in my personal free time.
Now, going back to the beginning. The snake eats its tail, as they say. At this point of the pandemic journey, and my own personal journey alongside it, I would say that it has been my interior life that has saved me from sheer agony or perhaps one could call it the killing boredom; the loss of in-person hangouts, not eating at restaurants with my family or friends, not playing open mics, not hanging out with girls, even not working for two months straight.
It was the interior life that shackled time and allowed me to do my thing and free myself. In these daunting times, it was just the thing I needed. A hyperbolic time chamber.
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