Day 80 - It sticks.

Friday.

I'm writing this post in the morning. It's finally Friday. I feel like I've sleepwalked through this week, even though I worked, ate, slept, as usual. Even managed to practise the guitar and burn the pot making soup. But all through a haze of screen time and routine temporal markers, such as coffee in the morning, lunch, dinner.

All the articles that I've consumed and forgotten immediately. The strain in my neck and shoulder, the bleary eyes, the numbness in spirit that comes from being submerged in the electric glow of meaningless text and featureless pictures. The boundless digital world promises gratification but does not deliver. Instead, after a week of running away from inner demons and outer obligations, all within the four walls of my decently-sized apartment - I think things have to stop.

While life doles out problems of various different sizes, it is not the big problems that are the trickiest, but the problems that we cannot name. What is the question that we do not know, leading for us to seek out answers such as manic consumption of news and social media? What is this dull anxiety that comes from knowing that whatever life we have is whatever life we've got, and we're wasting drops of precious time because we just don't know how to use it properly?

Sigh.

I wish I had a resolution more than a sigh. Well, the rest of the page is still empty. I can make up a resolution, fling it at the wall and see if it sticks.

My resolution is to create instead of consume. Apart from online courses and research papers that fill the reservoir from which I draw my creations, the rest are just distractions that I really do not need at the moment. The year ahead is still empty. As long as I live like I'm living (not sleepwalking) time cannot be wasted. For that is what time is for, to be lived and experienced. Art can be the medium through which I live and experience life. Not other people's art, or lived experiences. My own. My own research, writing, drawing, playing, making things up.

For if the world is so unreal anyway, why don't I take over the surreality and direct it to where I want it to go?