With Whom?

An interesting observation: if I only do what is on my list and calendar, I have much unoccupied time. It is deep in the soul to be occupied, somehow. It is unsettling to sit idle and in order to avoid this feeling, one will find ways to occupy one’s time. I’m not going to list them all but they include work, hobbies of all sorts, reading, writing (such as I am doing right now), television, movies, looking out the window at traffic or just looking out the window. One of the secrets of success is to fill unoccupied time with activities that achieve s.t., things that are consistent with aim.

There is a quote in “New York, the Novel” that the author attributes to Gertrude Stein: “Give me three hours of uninterrupted time every day and I can accomplish more than the vast majority of people.” This rings true but only if one has identified what it is he/she wants to accomplish. This is the rub that I run into, and I am sure that I’m not alone. What is it that I want to accomplish right now? Aside: anyone privy to my notebooks and who’s read my blog to date knows that this question has been plaguing me for a long time. Not having clear focus on a desired end result leads to being distracted into an activity that is not focused on aim and, therefore, a waste of time.

But there is another dimension or aspect that has to be considered and that is desire. It is one thing to have a long list of things that one would accomplish if he wanted to but there is a feeling that the time right now is not right for any one of them. There may be something going on in here that keeps a persona out of the foreground and, therefore, unable to do.

There is the possibility that inertia is in play, or even momentum. These two phenomena are psychological as well as physical, as in when one gets involved in an activity and continues to pursue it well after it is appropriate to quit or when one procrastinates and doesn’t start. These are always possible diversions from working on aim. Inertia may be another word for laziness and could be caused by fatigue; but sometimes one naps and still doesn’t take the bull by the horns afterwards.

Diversion into television programs, news, weather, sports, internet searches, and puzzles for inordinate amounts of time waste lifetime. This is time lost that can never be recuperated and yet there are industries that have built up around giving people the opportunity for diversion. The key is, of course, to use diversion as a sort of recreation and not an end in itself but the purveyors of diversion will allow you to divert as much as you want. The more you divert the better their return on investment. As with the more serious addictive diversions, realization that the possibility exists for getting too deeply involved should be enough to break the pattern and replace diversion with working on aim.

My aims are along the lines of the eighteen endeavors that I have decided to follow and even these are ranked according to importance or desirability or degree of participation desired. Participation in the endeavors allows me to always have options of things to do that are in accordance with dreams, strategies, goals, and acts. The planning method I described earlier allows this homogeneity to exist and allows me to get back to work whenever I get side-tracked into areas that are not according to aim.

The selection and then association with others of like mind is an area of work that I continue to pursue. There are others, with whom I associate ad hoc, and this is good. I am wondering if there should be a place(s) where I could go to just associate in general with others. There are social networking sites that allow this but it is contrived and artificial. They tend to allow one to think he is associating when he is not. It is a virtual situation that doesn’t fulfill my needs. Others have places where they “hang out” and socialize with whoever enters. It takes time to develop such and even then it is only temporary as others drop in and out of circle.

This association thing is much bigger than occasional social contact. In a larger sense it encompasses neighborhoods, congregations, societies, even cities. When the ambience of the association is no longer desirable, people tend to disassociate and move on and attempt to find other associations that provide for their needs. On a grand scale this happens in cities and the one that comes to mind is the city of St. Louis where the population grew to more than 850 thousand people at its peak to less than 250 thousand now. It did this because the city became less than desirable to the citizens. Some, like me, moved away because there was no feeling of identity with the place, others moved to get more desirable housing, others for fear of their safety, others for fear of ever lower real estate values, others to get a feeling that they had it better in a new house and new neighborhood, others as a reaction to the general degradation of the infrastructure, and still others for reasons that are not listed here. The result is a void of more than 500 thousand people who used to live and interact socially within the city limits. The same is true of other cities, including Louisville, but astute politicians, in the true sense of the word, have moved boundaries around and taken steps to address some of the issues that cause people to relocate.

My conundrum remains, where are my non-specific social outlets, to where I can go, fit in, stay as long as I want, leave and return later without recrimination? Where there is always some familiar person, not always the same, with whom I can associate.