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How To Spend Time Unregulated By Work?

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How To Spend Time Unregulated By Work?

Photo Attributed to Thenix

We were speaking to a good friend of Thenix’ and she made a comment that struck both of us really hard. We were both surprised by the sentiment behind it and the validity of her claim. She said, ‘I don’t think I would be able to do a trip like this for a whole year. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself without the stress and time regulated hours of work.’

At first, we all laughed, because it is funny to think you cannot live without the stress of a job. Everyone always speaks about how they hate their jobs, as they cause them stress. But this individual truthfully pointed out that she wouldn’t be able to live without it.

From the time, we are born, our time is regulated for us by parents, teachers, and bosses. We go from daycare, to school, to university, to careers. We are always busy for the 9-5 period, either studying or working. We do not have to think about our  work schedule, because we know we will have something to do as delineated by our bosses.

Because our time is so strictly regulated, we are busy helping someone else fulfill their dreams. It might be a corporation or an individual, whose dream we are helping. People do not know what their dreams are anymore. All their lives, they have been told by others, what their dreams should be. They have given up on dreaming. Have you ever thought about what you would do if you were free to do anything?

Think about what you would do if you won a million dollars. Everyone always comes up with the ideas of paying their debt or their bills. But what about after that? What about the rest of your life? Do you want to travel? Or volunteer? Or start your own business? What would the business be about? The person who made the comment above, hasn’t thought about their dreams. They need the security of a job, because without it, they would have no idea how to spend their time.

On this trip, we will have the freedom to do what we want. We are not running away from work. We are grateful for our jobs – without them and the money we made from them, we wouldn’t be able to do this trip. But we want more control over our time, to live out our dreams.

If you haven’t heard of the Big Trip yet, you are in for a treat. Boom and Thenix are travelling to the southern most tip of South America, through the West Cost of US, Mexico and parts of South America and back up the East Coast. We are planning on leaving on or around June 21st. We have made a detailed budget for the trip and we have included it here  for those of you who are curious about how much a trip like this would cost. We will travel for a total of 50,000 kms to around 22 countries. If you have any other questions about the trip please see our post on The Big Trip.

Shopping Due To Boredom

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Shopping Due To Boredom

Photo Attributed to Thenix

(It’s my Mum’s Birthday today – Happy Birthday Mum!)

I have found in passing that during the weekend, when I have the most free time, when I should be spending my time in the online stores, browsing for something new, I have little interest. I’m way too busy, sleeping, eating, doing yoga, and writing to spend time on shopping. But when the killer rays of boredom hits me at work, I find it easy to distract myself through the Shiny New Object (SNO) syndrome. I am ready to spend loads of time and money on a SNO just so that it can alleviate the boredom that I am feeling through the mundanity of work.

I am not interested in adding new items to my wardrobe or storage. I have more than enough stuff already. I am overflowing with stuff. If I had a fire in my house and I had to pick up only one thing, I would have at least a hundred items to choose from. If I gave away even half of the stuff I own, I would still have enough stuff to fill my house. Compared to a lot of people in North America, I have very little. Compared to everyone that I encountered on my trip to Asia, I have a lot.

I know I’m shopping at work due to boredom. It is to kill the last few brain cells in my mind that actually want to be alert and do something useful. I am lazy. I’m comfortable. I am procrastinating. What better way to do that, than to go on Pinterest and look at random things that you absolutely need right  this very minute? I could spend hours doing that – but thankfully, I have a goal in mind. I have to travel in 2 months to far-away lands, and I want to have the cash for it. I do not want to be sitting in a cafe in La Paz, Bolivia, lamenting about the fact that that necklace that I just had to have, caused me to have less money to spend on coffee.

This applies to every one of us who are sitting at work, wasting our money on things we do not need or want, just because we are trying to quell that niggle of boredom created by our minds. Remember your goal. Remember what you are slaving away at a 9-5 job for. Have a big goal that you can work towards, otherwise, spending money on crap will seem like the best idea for all of your hard-earned cash.

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Busy Vs. Accomplished

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

Not so slowly the first month of 2013 is done and over with. That is 31 days that have zoomed past us without a trace. It feels like I just celebrated the New Year with some food with a few friends. What happened to the last 31 days? The problem with busy days is that you can look back upon them and think, ‘Wow, I have been so busy. I must have done a lot of work in the past few days.’ But busy isn’t the same as accomplished.

In the past, I filled my days with busy work. I had my days filled up with something from the time I woke up to the time I fell asleep. I would fall asleep each day feeling great about myself because I didn’t have a single moment in the day when I wasn’t doing anything. I would try to read up on things while I was in the bathroom so as to not waste any time. That is a true Type-A personality, born and bred in my family.

As I grow older, I realize that movement doesn’t necessary mean that you are doing something/anything useful. You have to be able to look back at your day and say, I did one, two, three things that are actually helping me reach my goals. If you didn’t do anything in the past day that is moving you towards your goal, then the day has to be counted as a fun day. A day that is just there in order for you to live your life happily.

This comes up for me at work a lot. I am sitting there helping my company reach their goals of product sales and new clients. I think to myself, if I continue on this path, will I be sitting here a year from now and wondering why my personal goals are at the same level as a year before? The problem is that we sometimes confuse busy work with accomplished work. We think we have had nary a moment to rest in 15 hours. We are so busy doing work. But if you didn’t do a single thing in that day in order to get to live the life that you have always dreamed of, then you are not there yet.

My dream is to become a professional blogger, getting paid for writing, and being able to work on the road, so I can travel everywhere with Thenix. I have to do something every day to move toward my goal, like maybe blog a new post, write a new page in an e-book, save up a few dollars for the trip, write a few comments in a few blogs I love, and so on. That is the way I will be sitting on a beach a year from now, truly feeling accomplished.

P.S. After I wrote this blog post, I saw a post by BeMoreWithLess on the same topic. Check it out here!

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The Myth About Commuting

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

Thenix said something really profound the other day. Something to the effect of, ‘If my commute was ever too long, I would always blame it on the fact that my house is too far from my work.’ I know it probably doesn’t seem very mind-shattering to you, but to me, I am sitting here and thinking, I wish everyone else thought the same way.

For most people on this planet, the thinking would go the other way. ‘If my commute is too long, my work is too far from my home.’ It is the way we’ve been taught to think from when we were very young. Our homes are static objects that are never to be moved. Everything else is questionable. The reason I bring this up is because I was complaining that it is cold outside and my commute is long. Not as long as others, not as short as others, but 1 hour long. I automatically assumed it was my work’s fault. My work isn’t close enough. I have to change my workplace.

It never even occurred to me that it could have anything to do with the fact that I live too far from my workplace. It isn’t that I recommend you change your home every single time you move. That wouldn’t make any sense. That seems abhorrent to me from my viewpoint. But I am just bringing this up to point out the preconceived notion in our heads about our commute and homes.

It might not seem like a very big deal, but every single time you break down another notion in your head, every single time you are able to look at something clearly, as if for the first time, it frees you up. You are released from the shackles of myth and culture. You are no longer bound to think a certain way, because you’ve always thought that way, or you would be chastised if you didn’t think that way.

Maybe you are reading this post, and you don’t see the big deal in this notion. But I would have to say that urbanization, suburbanization and the modern culture is totally dependent on that notion. We live in bigger homes far away from our workplace, because living close to our work is not financially possible. We commute hours every day in order to get to work, in order to get the paycheque, in order to pay the mortgages for our bigger homes. It is a cycle that just perpetuates itself. It is never-ending. Until, we awaken. We see things as they are. Not as we’ve been fed them.

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Feeling Guilty For Taking Care Of Myself

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

I have been sleeping a lot for the past few days. My days are long and heavy, just like everyone else on this overworked, overrun planet. I wake up at 5am, do some yoga, some blogging, some bathroom duties, and some meditation before or after breakfast. I get to work at 8am, after an hour on the TTC, and I work almost straight through until 430pm, with nary a break for lunch or anything else. I get back home at 0530pm, cook, eat, and by the time 730-8pm rolls around, I’m dead.

I have learned the value of hard-work from my parents, who worked their bums off to get us to where we are right now. We come from humble beginnings in India, but my parents did not settle for a life in the back of the line. They pushed themselves to the front, and now I am able to enjoy all the amenities of living in a developed country like Canada. But even though I love Toronto to death, it is a fast-paced city, getting faster every day. We have to keep up, or fall behind. Most of us will choose to keep up at the expense of our health, our relationships and our life.

Falling asleep at 8pm, I still have put in a solid 15 hour day, but guilt isn’t far from my bedside. I feel guilty for taking time for myself and falling asleep when my body asks me to. I feel guilty for taking care of my needs. I feel guilty for not pushing myself harder and staying up a few more hours, working, doing yoga, or other random things. But for the past few days, when I wake up in the morning after a full 9 hours of sleep, I feel rested and relaxed. My mind and body are calm and healthy. I feel better in general about myself and my life.

The calm of sleeping enough pervades the rest of my life, ensuring I do not have to caffeinate myself in order to stay awake through the day. This shows me the power of a full night’s rest in my own life, and implores me to continue with the practice. I shouldn’t feel guilty for taking care of myself, but it will be a while before I can truly say that I do not.

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Countercultural – Working for something other than money

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Thenix and I were having a conversation about work and how right now it seems we are only working for the sake of working – in order to make the money that we need to make – in order to create a lifestyle we want to create in the near future. We do not do it for the love of it, the passion of it, or the joy of it. We do not completely abhor or despise our works – we still enjoy certain aspects of it – we still enjoy some parts of the work – but currently it is mostly for money.

I said, there must be people on this planet who like full-time work. There must be. I mean, I cannot believe for a second that there are people out there who go out 9-5 every day and do not enjoy doing that to themselves, and not just for the money that they make out of it, or the promise of a secure future, for themselves and their children. In every job, there are certain aspects of boredom. Every job has its dull moments. Even if it is your dream job.

The concept of working for something other than money is so counter to our culture, that the concept might seem foreign to a lot of people reading those words. It just doesn’t make any sense, when you have been fed the same myth from the beginning of your precious life. The myth that you are nothing without money, you need lots of it to survive, and you need to start as soon as possible. The unfortunate thing is that you are never going to have enough money. The concept of enough doesn’t ever enter any normal human being’s head. There’s always more where it came from and therefore, there is more that you have to go out and get.

If you pare down your wants, as most of our needs are met adequately with enough food, water, shelter and relationships, you will find that you will not need as much money as you think you need to survive. Everyone of us has this number – an amount of money we have in our heads. The amount of money we think we need in order to retire comfortably or even to live comfortably. Usually it is an arbitrary number you pulled from the air, because you have no idea how much money you need to live. Most people come up with a million dollars as a goal. It seems high enough that you could survive on it, but low enough that you could possibly reach it through the lottery or long-term saving.

The exercise of going through the numbers and figuring out the real number will help you realize you need less than you realize, and maybe motivate you to pursue the number, in order to start working for love, light and happiness.

A New Beginning Or A Random Day?

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

I was talking to Thenix about 2013 and how it will be a new beginning with new possibilities and new energy. He didn’t seem enamoured with the idea. He didn’t like that you place so much importance on one single day. I guess the problem in my mind is that we have to wait for certain milestones in order to make certain changes, instead of making small changes every day. This results in the beautiful possibility that every day might be a new beginning, every hour might be a new beginning, every minute, every second, every moment, a chance for a new beginning.

I guess we saw the importance placed on an arbitrary day from the ‘World is ending December 21st’ debacle. People decided that was an important day for some reason and the world will end on this day. That was as a result of some people placing too much importance on the significance of one single day. Thus, this year, speaking with Thenix, thinking over the randomness of this chosen New Year, when other cultures around the world celebrate a different New Year, I decided no more New Year’s Resolutions.

I try to make changes every week in something that I feel change is needed. Waiting for a week or a month seems just too long when you know you can make the change right now. I also find that making a small miniscule change in your life is much easier than plopping down a huge improvement, that disrupts your routine and your mindset. Our bodies and our minds aren’t meant to take kindly to changes out of the blue, so you have to be gentle with yourself. Take it easy. Only work with one change at a time.

Humans are impatient, we want to see results now, and in some cases, we want to see results yesterday. But our minds and bodies are settled into a comfortable routine, and they like to see that routine to be repeated. If you start making changes in 3-4 different areas of your life as soon as the New Year begins, or whenever you make those changes, the tendency is to relapse. Too much change, too fast, unsettles you. You aren’t able to adjust to it fast enough, the comfortable continuum that you are in, doesn’t want to move. You have to introduce the change slowly and in such baby steps that at first you might not even notice you have made the change.

This will ensure that you stick to a change on a new beginning or any random day.

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Itching to go back to work

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

After the joys of Christmas and New Year, I just feel that I’m happy to be going back to a normal set schedule at work. It is funny to me when I realized the sigh of internal relief that I felt once the crazy holidays were done, and I was back to the first normal week of January. I have been waiting for this. Why is that? After all, we wait for holidays when we are adults. We want to be done with work and we wait impatiently for Friday. We are waiting to be done with work, to retire and to be able to sit on the beach for the rest of our lives.

Over the past few weeks, with conversations and thoughts, I have realized I am the kind of person who needs to work. Who needs full-time useful work in order to feel sane. Who needs to be occupied. Who basically cannot play the role of a trophy wife, not that, I would have that opportunity in the near future. I need to work. Which is kind of a horrible thought when you first think about it. Sad and horrible.

If I take off for sabbatical, I will not be able to do it as a staycation. If I lose my job, it will be a certainty, I’ll find something to do in relation to work, maybe a server position or something else to fill time and space and bring in some cash. Unless I’m travelling. If I’m travelling, I will be able to do a year without work, because of the movement aspect of it. My anxious, busy mind is occupied by movement. I am enthralled by the different. Different culture, people, city, hotel room. All of it occupies me. It ensures I do not start dwelling or thinking.

An anxious mind is the place for the devil, not an idle mind. A mind like mine left too long without anything to do starts creating drama that always leads to disaster. Imagination is the key to the world, but left unchecked, it creates horror stories.

I wanted to share the horrible realization that I have had about work and my need for it. Let me know if you are the same.

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Selling out your soul

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

Yes, it is Christmas Day and this seems like a rather dire topic for such a day. But I feel like I have the time today, due to the fact that I do not celebrate Christmas and I have a day off, to think over such important issues. If you are not going to think over such issues right now, when will you?

Thenix bought up the issue of selling out your soul a few days ago, and I needed to let it percolate in my head for a bit, for what it means to me. Why do I go from day to day doing what I do? When I worked at Intuit a long time ago, I would go into work, everyday feeling a little bit sick. I had an amazing job there, easy, no pressure, amazing boss, great benefits and salary, and great prospects. Everyone loved me, and wanted me to grow in the company.

If I had stayed the prospects to move up in the company were a surety and the prospects to earn oodles of money a definite. But still, I went in feeling dead inside. I felt like I was selling out my life, soul, precious time, and everything else, for money and a chance to be Director of something. My boyfriend broke up with me, thank the lord, and gave me the extra push to declare enough is enough. I started planning my first long-term trip then.

The problem of course is that, not everyone has the opportunity to get up and leave. People have families, responsibilities, obligations, and other various items holding them back, mostly in their heads. They have a million excuses why they cannot start up their own business, or leave their current job for something better, or change something in their life to improve certain aspects of it. They can think of a million reasons why not, and maybe one reason for why they should.

The thing people forget and that I forget from time to time is the limit that they have on the amount of time on this planet, and the amount of energy that their souls have to keep on reminding them. The time thing is pretty self-explanatory. Everyone knows that they do not have an unlimited amount of time on this planet. Everyone knows that, but they do not remember that.

The other thing they forget is that after a while of soul-sucking time on this planet, your spirit will eventually give up. You will lose that verve inside of you, that little voice that encourages you to do something different. You will lose any inclination to move on and upward. You will not care anymore, and will drown your sorrows in shopping, alcohol or something else.

Are you selling out your soul right now? What are you doing about it?

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Guilty for receiving presents

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Desks by DQmountaingirlIt is Christmas time, and it is a jolly time indeed, when you can receive presents galore. Why wouldn’t everyone want to be part of this joyous occasion? I love Christmas, for the lights, the friends, the getting-together, the parties, the dancing and the food. All the reasons, I love the rest of the year, but I feel people are definitely nicer around Christmastime. Everyone suddenly realizes what the really important things in life are. People, Relationships, Happiness, and Peace.

You wouldn’t really think the above statement is true, from looking at the Black Friday footage, or the massive piles of gifts-to-be-sent at Amazon, but I do feel that in the people around me, that is definitely true. We have made a rule this year, not to exchange Christmas Presents, but to ensure that we spend the time that we save from Christmas Shopping with people who matter in our lives. I did still receive one present already from work, and for some odd reason, I felt extreme guilt over that present. I do not know why. This post is to analyze those feelings, of guilt, of feelings that I’m a traitor, even though I work my ass off for the company. I do what needs to be done, I’m a great employee. But I try to keep a balance in my life, I do leave right on time and arrive right on time. I do not spend too much time socializing at work as that is time I could be productive. I do a little bit of random browsing at work, but that is just when I feel like I need my brain to relax. I have brought much profitability and success to the company since I’ve been here, with the rest of the amazing team.

Then why do I feel like I do not deserve this gift? Why does it feel like a word that’s just stuck in my throat, causing me discomfort? I feel so guilty, that I feel like revoking my Christmas vacation and working through it, so that I can prove my loyalty and prove my deserving of the gift. Why is that? What is it inside of me that feels undeserving of a small token of appreciation at a workplace that I’ve given a lot of time, energy, work, and attention. I do not like feeling this way, and it might take more analysis, but while I analyze away, I wanted to share this post with my amazing readers.

Hope you receive the items for Christmas that you want, whatever they might be and hope you do not feel guilty at all for receiving them.

Standing Still

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Photo attributed to flickr user JRFoto

I was speaking to Thenix a few days ago and we were talking about the gargantuan pile of projects that both of us had on the go, his was more electronics based, mine was more writing/saving based. Whatever it was, we are busy. We are busy saving up, we are busy motivating each other to stay strong, we are busy doing things to progress forward, we are BUSY.

As is everyone else on this little planet. The important thing in all of the busy-ness is to remember the final goal in your life. Why are you here? What do you want to accomplish by the end of your life? What do you want your life-hours to represent? Why are you spending hours working at a job, or doing yoga, or playing with electronics? What is the vision here?

You have to remember not to let the little things on your to-do list take over your life. You have to especially remember to not let busy-ness seem like you are accomplishing your goals. Just because you spent 5 hours hunched over a computer screen today, doesn’t mean you were being productive towards your goals. Especially if those five hours were interspersed with Pinterest, FaceBook, FMLife, or whatever else, you like browsing when you are bored.

Just because your days are occupied with random activities, doesn’t mean you are doing something useful. Make sure that you are spending your time on stuff that will move you forward, so that a year later, you are not still at the same spot, you are at right now.

You can look back at the week previous, the year previous, the decade previous and see visible movement forward, be it internally or externally.

Sharing with others

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Photo attributed to flickr user Anita363

The last time I went travelling for a long period of time, for some reason I kept it secret. I didn’t tell anyone what was happening, I planned it all within myself, and leaving without a lot of people knowing that I was leaving. I guess I felt that people would judge me, or they would be upset with my decision to reject their lifestyle. Especially my parents, who had worked so hard to get us where we are, I felt wouldn’t understand why I would reject it all to go live like an ascetic in a developing country somewhere.

This time around, I am doing it differently, not by choice, but by chance. Thenix, my travel partner, is a different sort of person. He is open and is comfortable telling everyone every single detail about his life, without feeling shame in anyway. It is a very different way of living, something that I am completely unused to, and something I have to get used to. When we meet people in pubs and restaurants, he tells them we are going and I stand there, a little bit surprised. How come he is so comfortable telling people about this trip? How did he get to be this way?

Then, I realize it isn’t him that is different; it is me, who has a problem with sharing. Whatever my inhibitions might be, and whatever the reasons for them might be, I have been trying to live a more open life. Open with everyone around me, because living with secrets is hard, mentally and physically. The burdens you carry around because of secrets are not only going to weigh you down mentally and cause you to stumble and forget the secrets you’ve buried or created, but also, create a physical burden on your body, which will manifest itself in your body, as blocks, stresses, tensions, and/or inflexibilities.

Share with others your plans without fear, for if you share, you believe in yourself completely.

The Days I Don’t Meditate

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Photo attributed to flickr user jurvetson

A lot of people ask me why I meditate, and how I keep up a constant practice. They don’t understand why I would get up at 5am, just so I can fit in a 30 minute meditation practice in the morning before work. I always answer them the same way, in my head or out loud.

It is because I know how different I feel on the days I don’t meditate. The different is subtle, and probably not noticeable to an outsider. That is not the point of it. You do not meditate or do yoga for the world, for your parents, for your significant other, your children or for anyone who’s watching. You do it for yourself. Every time you are able to make it out on the mat, or the meditation cushion, every time you are able to put aside that time for yourself, you should thank yourself for that effort, because you are moving closer to the kind of person who could live with being.

When I don’t meditate, I’m cranky, depressed, angry, sad, anxious, up, down, manic, jealous, regretful, hyper, delirious. I’m any of those things, or all of those things. My mood fluctuates like the waves of the ocean, up one moment, down the other. I feel unhappy, a deep kind of sadness, that permeates every atom in my body, that I’m unable to shake off no matter what I do. Again, no one else might notice these fluctuations, because as humans we can hide our thoughts, and emotions, and after twenty-nine years of hiding my emotions, I’m pretty good at it.

It is because of those days when I don’t feel like myself, that I meditate. The consistency that it brings into my inner landscape is flabbergasting.

You cannot imagine in your wildest dreams that sitting down for half an hour every day and turning your focus inwards would change you like this, but it does. Try it and you will see the difference. You will be addicted to meditation, because you don’t want to lose that high ever.

And being addicted to meditating is a good way to be addicted, don’t you think?

Being perfect the first time out the gate

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Photo attributed to flickr user Patrick Hoesly

Whenever you are learning something new, you are going to be bad at it. This isn’t a new concept. It is pretty much common-sense. But a lot of people, myself included, are fearful of learning something new, for fear of making a mistake. I am learning how to drive stick-shift and speak Spanish both at the same time, stimulating different portions of my brain and it is causing me a lot of apprehension in general, because I’m extremely critical of myself. So any kind of imperfection in myself, real or unreal, really makes me come undone. I berate myself as much I can. Learning from others, and going deep within myself to find the imperfect, uncritical aspect of myself, realizing that everyone is imperfect in their own way and on their own journey, slow or fast, I learn new things and I try not to kill myself with criticism.

I drove stick-shift to work today, driving Thenix’ car, which would have been impossible in my head even just a week ago. I would have thought to myself, I’m not perfect yet, I make mistakes, I cannot drive on my own. What if I make a mistake?

Well, over the weekend, I changed my thinking. Yes, I will make mistakes. That is a definite. I’m not an expert in driving stick shift yet. I’ll not be an expert for a while, a long while. Does that mean, that I do not do anything new until I’m perfect at it?

Unless you actually work at being imperfect, doing the task again and again while being imperfect, you cannot even strive to attain the ideal of perfection. Practice makes perfect. Imperfect practice as well makes perfect.

What do you think of perfection and its high ideals?

Wasting mental energy on negative thoughts

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Photo attributed to Thenix

I was reading a post on FaceBook by a highly spiritual friend of mine – and it was a quote by Brian Tracy: You are a living magnet. What you attract into your life is in harmony with your dominant thoughts.

I have been thinking about this for the past week and I have realized that I have been harboring some extremely negative thoughts in my brain space. You have a limited amount of space in your head. You can only hold one thought in your mind at a time. Why am I consciously choosing to hold a negative thought in such limited precious cargo?

I can choose to blame hormones, or my monthly friend, or any number of things for this negativity, but the truth of the matter is that I have been festering. I have become a person who just isn’t any fun anymore. I frown more than I smile. I think more about what can go wrong than what can go right. I am on the road towards mass destruction of all the work that I have done over the past year of improving my consciousness and my place in life.

The key word in all of this is choice. You are the chooser. You are the master. You can give up the reins of your destiny and of your head to something else entirely, but why? Why would you want to do that?

It’s hard. It really is. Especially when you get into one of those funks. It is hard to pull yourself out. But it is imperative that you do it as soon as possible. The minute you are in too deep, it is harder to get out, harder to be positive, harder to see the good in anyone.

How do you stop wasting mental energy?

Sleep as soon as your head hits the pillow

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PHoto attributed to Thenix

I have to admit. I am one of those lucky few who has no trouble falling asleep ever. I put my head down on my pillow and I am fast asleep, zonked out in five minutes flat, less if I have done yoga that day. I fall asleep for a straight 8 hours and I love it. I am a sleepaholic and I need help.

I find that the older I get, the more I want to sleep. In my teens and early twenties, I was a early riser and late sleeper. I didn’t sleep much, I didn’t rest much. I was on the go 20 hours a day and I was awake comfortably for days on end. I was a machine. Now that I am going to hit 30 in a year, I am hitting my sleeping stride. I want to sleep. I want to sleep all the time. I can sleep in, in the morning, I can sleep in the afternoon and I can still fall asleep at 0830pm at night. In fact, as soon as 9pm hits, I am ready for bed, and ready for some REM cycle.

My family laments at me for this behaviour. They are disappointed as they feel I love sleep more than them. I would rather go to sleep than hang out with them at the movie theatre, for a late show. I would rather go to sleep than stay up all night watching some old Bollywood movies. I would rather sleep than do a lot of other things. I find that my excuse is the following. I have long, busy days, filled with a lot of activity, both mental and physical. I need rest at the end of the day. I don’t think that is a lot to ask for.

I am not going to jeopardize my health and my day in order to do something rather mundane and boring. I might be called callous or selfish for that, but that is how the cards are played out. Sleep wins out over a lot of other things. Unfortunately, or fortunately.

What does freedom mean to me?

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Photo attributed to flickr user cuellar

If someone spoke to me today and asked me where I see my life going in the next 5-10 years, I definitely do not list a promotion or leading a  team of 10-15 people as one of the major tenets.

I see a few things in my dreams. The freedom to do what I want with my time and energy. The idea of doing things because they are fun, not because I HAVE to do them. Removing all the unnecessary items from my life. Having only the stuff I absolutely need. Minimalism is key. Spending time with family and friends. Being content in the moment. Including lots of yoga, reading and writing in my life.

The question I ask myself quite often is why can I not start this life right now? What am I waiting for? What are these freedoms waiting for? Why cannot I begin today?

I have a lot of excuses in my head. My blog isn’t making money for me. My yoga teaching isn’t making enough money for me yet. I still have student loan debt. I still have a mortgage (which doesn’t count as it is rented out). The excuses go on, but the truth of the matter is, I am afraid. Fear is holding me back.

I do not know what awaits me on the other side of unemployment, of quitting the 9-5 rat race. What would I do with my time? What would I do with the removal of a steady income? What would I tell my parents? My friends? I wouldn’t be able to go out as often with them. I wouldn’t be able to own a car, as that is freaking expensive.

How will I live? The truth of the matter is, that I have no idea how I will pay for minimal expenses if I do not have a job. I do not have a way of supporting myself without a job yet. And, I haven’t looked into it very much, because I haven’t really needed to yet.

The big reason I want to go on this trip is because Thenix and I are going to look into becoming self-sufficient and digital nomads. Working on our own time and energy, doing what we like with our time and energy, making enough money to pay for travel and life.

Maybe my thoughts seem a little scrambled, that is because in reality, I haven’t figured myself out yet.

A distracted culture

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Have you ever noticed those drivers on the highway, who are merrily driving in your lane, but suddenly realize that they missed their exit, and swerve into a passing exit, to the detriment and honking of several other drivers? Do you ever wonder about them? Most people do not drive very different routes from day to day. Most people I know drive the same route in the morning to work and the same route at night back home. They do not vary it much, except when there is a detour on the street due to an accident or construction.

Why are these people who are supposedly driving the same routes over and over again, surprised by an exit that they need to take? I wondered about that for a while. I would think about that while I did my own unexciting commute every morning and night. I knew which exit to take because I take that exit every day at the same spot around almost the same time every day. It is a life of routine in an otherwise crazy world.

I do not all of a sudden forget that I need to be in the right lane in order to take my exit to Finch Avenue, or whatever it might be. I realized after some thinking that it is because people are distracted. They are distracted by the stories that are roaming around in their own petty little heads. They are distracted by their to-do lists, by work, by school, by their families’ demands, by their children, by their bosses, by the millions of things that you have to do in order to survive in the metropolitan cities of the world.

You are not thinking about the drive that you are on, because you are wondering if you switched off the coffee-maker in the morning, or if you locked the door. You are wondering if your child is doing drugs and that is the reason he/she is getting so hard to handle. You are wondering if your boss is planning to fire you and that is why he keeps on holding these random interviews in his office. You are wondering if your boyfriend/husband/girlfriend/wife is cheating on you or still loves you. And another million things on top. No wonder anxiety rates or depression rates are through the roof. How could they not be?

One of the main things that help me when I’m feeling overwhelmed or anxious is of course, to take a step back, but also to stop multi-tasking. We are a world of multi-taskers, and it is ruining the quality of work that we do, but also resulting in additional anxiety. So when you drive, you should only drive. When you eat, you only eat. When you type an email, you only type an email. And so on.

Try it and let me know how it goes.

Early morning bliss

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Photo attributed to Thenix

It is seven in the morning in cold Toronto. I’m sitting here in the wee hours of the morning, on my couch, dressed in my pyjamas of choice, a bra and undies. Sleeping next to Thenix, I don’t need to bundle myself as I normally would when I sleep alone. The sun hasn’t risen yet. Everything is dark outside. I can see the millions of lights around me, in all the buildings, and the Rogers Centre. The CN tower is sleeping for now as well, the LED lights that buzz up and down its side, all silent in the early morning, getting ready for the rising of the sun and waking of the city’s inhabitants.

I wasn’t always a morning person. When I was a young ‘un, maybe 10 years old or around there, my Dad would wake me up at 5am to do multiplication tables or study Maths with him, so that I would always get a perfect in it. I hated getting up early. I hated him for a few brief moments when he wouldn’t let me sleep. I would have rebelled but I was deathly afraid of my father. I learned Maths in the morning, hating every minute of it. But now I love Maths, I’m really good at it, solving Calculus problems is my favourite way to pass a lazy Sunday afternoon.

And I love mornings. They are, of course, a new beginning for everyone. A fresh start to the slate. You are well rested. You just rejuvenated yourself. Your energy levels are high again. Your body is ready to go for another day. Your mind is fresh. You get up with verve, and then you look around, and the silence is just so juicy.

Ah, the silence. After working in an environment, where the phone rings incessantly, I am glad for the silence. I long for days where I can be quiet all day, with the silence overwhelming the space around me. Mornings are that time for me. Where I can just be silent on my own time. I can choose to do breathing exercises, or I can just sit and watch the lights twinkling in a distance through my windows. I can choose to sit in a cross-legged position and meditate, focusing on my senses. Or I can just do nothing.

I guess I’m lucky I’m a morning person. I have received so much from being up in the mornings. I do my most creative blogging in the morning. I have changed my life through meditation that I spoke about here. I have accomplished a lot more by being active in the mornings. Let me know what you think of mornings.

All motion isn’t good motion

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Photo attributed to flickr user Chalkie_CC

Have you ever been so tired, you actually caused yourself to be sick? You work too hard, for a while, because you feel motivated. You have been doing really well in all your goals, you’ve been moving forward really fast, you are feeling like you can always do more. So you do more. You are in a state of perpetual growth, entropy and movement.
If you stopped for a second, you would realize how tired you are. So you never stop moving. You never stop doing. You keep yourself busy so as not to think.
Thenix pointed out to me, the futility of perpetual motion. He said, it is quite easy to mistake any kind of motion, for useful motion. You could be spinning your wheels incessantly without any movement forward. You could have really full days, but you are not actually doing anything useful.
You are filling your days, but you are not moving closer to any of your goals that actually matter. You are not learning how to live a better, more fulfilled life, you are just living. You are not growing in a positive fashion towards becoming a more sentient, enlightened, compassionate human being, but you are just looting the resources on Earth to grow in anyway, shape or form.
I wish you to take a moment and realize all motion isn’t good motion.
From this comes rest. You have to give yourself permission to rest. Rest without all the to-do lists humming through your brain. Rest without thinking, without degradation, without feeling worse for it.
Rest minimally, and happy that you can take the time out for yourself.