wasted time
Feb. 11th, 2012 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
artkoala Any time you spend making money beyond what you need to be happy is wasted time.
A friend said that to me tonight, and it crystallized a lot of what I've been thinking about recently. Death will do that, make you step back and take stock, try to decide what really matters, give you a big horrible emotion to compare all those petty little ones to. What do I actually care about? What do I make time for? Why do I spend so much time at work, or thinking about work, or worrying about work, when on the list of things I actually care about, work isn't even in the top five? How do I move towards the things I do actually care about, redistribute my time so it reflects my caring?
Here's a start - saying yes to my friends. Want to hang out? Yes. Want to go to a movie? Yes. Coming to this party? Yes. Up for an ichat? Yes. I care about these people, I should show that in YES. And in conflict with that - time to do art, time to be my introverted, obsessively detailed artsy self, hours and hours doing something strange and fiddly that connects with my art - burning hundreds of matches for a sculpture, making thousands of dots into a painting, moving curves thousandths of an inch in a logo.
I've been failing both ways recently - hermiting not for the sake of art but just because, spending my alone time in front of the tv or iPad. And yet, this past month has been the hardest of my life, and I'm slowly realizing that I really am never going to stop missing my sister. I'll have more good days, I'll maybe feel it less often, but this massive loss is never going to be okay. But I can do everything in my power to be who I want to be, because she was so very herself, but for far too short a time.
A friend said that to me tonight, and it crystallized a lot of what I've been thinking about recently. Death will do that, make you step back and take stock, try to decide what really matters, give you a big horrible emotion to compare all those petty little ones to. What do I actually care about? What do I make time for? Why do I spend so much time at work, or thinking about work, or worrying about work, when on the list of things I actually care about, work isn't even in the top five? How do I move towards the things I do actually care about, redistribute my time so it reflects my caring?
Here's a start - saying yes to my friends. Want to hang out? Yes. Want to go to a movie? Yes. Coming to this party? Yes. Up for an ichat? Yes. I care about these people, I should show that in YES. And in conflict with that - time to do art, time to be my introverted, obsessively detailed artsy self, hours and hours doing something strange and fiddly that connects with my art - burning hundreds of matches for a sculpture, making thousands of dots into a painting, moving curves thousandths of an inch in a logo.
I've been failing both ways recently - hermiting not for the sake of art but just because, spending my alone time in front of the tv or iPad. And yet, this past month has been the hardest of my life, and I'm slowly realizing that I really am never going to stop missing my sister. I'll have more good days, I'll maybe feel it less often, but this massive loss is never going to be okay. But I can do everything in my power to be who I want to be, because she was so very herself, but for far too short a time.