Reclaiming Time
I sit here now after our first full week in the new apartment, sweating profusely as the building's AC won't be activated until May and we've had a handful of uncharacteristically hot days.
For nearly a month now I feel that I've accomplished nothing. Strangely, looking at how my has been spent I've actually accomplished quite a bit -- the move went well, I've been seeing friends, exploring the city with my dog and partner, building tools at work and by most metrics getting a lot of shit done... but the part of me I compartmentalize away and consider "mine" hasn't had much time to do stuff lately, and its the things I finish (books, games, projects) in that time that make me really feelaccomplished.
I think maybe it's strange that I don't include partner activities or social hangouts part of "my" time, as these are often times spent doing things I want to do with people I love to do stuff with. I think there's just a special fulfillment that comes from doing a thing entirely of your own will to satisfy an entirely personal desire: writing characters for a game I'll never make, playing a game from deep in my backlog, practicing drawing, reading detailed tutorials/articles on shit I'll probably never need to know.
The part that sucks about this is I've had lots of opportunity for my own time lately, but my head's just been distracted this past month. The spans of time I could have claimed were instead drained by social media and watching mindless youtube shorts. I've been turning off instead of taking the reins and doing shit.
Even walking, --an activity I usually categorize as "my" time since I can dig into audiobooks -- hasn't been mine lately, as background process of 'settling in' has been eating up all available bandwidth.
I've caught myself now, though, and am finally feeling somewhat settled in to the new place. Pushing myself to sit down at my laptop and introspect (instead of doom-scrolling) is what I needed to reboot my head and see all the opportunities I've been missing to do my own thing.
With nothing planned for tomorrow, I think I'm going to try stealing the whole day.