Recovery
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."
Words often attributed to Søren Kierkegaard, yet where he actually wrote them is something of a mystery.
Less of a mystery is that we have ignored this advice en masse. And we're only going deeper.
Normal, balanced people scheduling their fun in complex project management tools.
Listening to books on 4x speed, skimming rather than absorbing - experiencing.
Not content until each of the 24 hours is professionalised, calendarised, optimised.
Quite what is making us do this is isn't clear to me.
Attempting to outrun death again, this time with a new personal knowledge wiki.
Maybe a life not maximised is a life unfulfilled.
There's always the robots.
The robots are coming.
Now they're coming for our cosy "thinking work".
How can we compete with that?
. . .
The concept of an evening routine is everything that is wrong with modern adult life.
So you want to take a block of time once reserved for impulsive dinners, drinks, shows and dancing.
And pummel its essence in to the ground with a tomato timer and side hustles.
I accept that side hustles are often borne out of necessity. The man pays less for more, increasingly.
The robots again.
But friends, life is not for scheduling.
We have a terrifying freedom of choice.
Nearly all options that feel denied are illusions from our environment.
You can attempt to gatecrash a wedding party tonight, if you want. You'll likely get away with it, too.
You can walk out of your door in 5 minutes time and never return - get on a train and flip a coin as to where to alight.
Join the circus.
Start a circus.
Dance the night away.
Paint, sat on the beach.
Be and do nearly anything.
Yet our morning is a science-backed recovery routine.
Meditation, pushups, time-boxed journaling.
This is what a recovery routine looks like.
What are we recovering from?
And would we recover better if we went raving instead?