Sustainability

My lovely roommates, Benji and Arielle, always tell me that I’m extreme. My moods can swing from extreme elation – to crazy sadness… I get on kicks where I exercise religiously, and then go through swells where I just eat (lol)… either I’m working like a dog (PS 53… or even this week when I worked 16.5 hours on Monday, 10 on Tuesday (only because I had a Japanese class in the evening), 12.5 hours on Wednesday, 14 hours today… and looking at another 10 tomorrow, and then my boss asked me to come in on Sunday…), or I’m unemployed… I skimp and save for months, and then buy a fancy guitar, or a plane ticket to Europe, or just go out and spend like there’s not tomorrow…

I almost think it goes along a little bit with what I was talking about in an earlier post: about counting down. I’m always counting down, because there’s always some kind of end to my current way of life… it’s somehow never sustainable. I can’t have work be my life and maintain a sense of personal value, nor can I do the things I love (in the lazy-capacity that I like to) and pay rent.

So yeah… I don’t know. It just hit me today. I was sitting in that office, gleefully watching the hours go by, thinking of the money in my pocket… and then realized that I was selling my life now for a potential life later. At a pitiful rate.

So next week I’m going to try to take on a slightly different schedule… maybe I could come in around noon, and stay till my normal 9-11ish… I’m pretty sure this would be okay with my boss. I’d still get some overtime (and free dinners), and at least I’d never have days where that was all I did. I’d still my mornings to do things… but in moderation.

But who knows – maybe tomorrow I’ll remember that I want to visit Kate in Florence… and then travel to Canada with Mom and Dad… and stay with Adrianne while she gears up for the new baby… and then maybe have time to just relax and spend time with Kate when she gets back to the US this summer, before starting whatever I’ll inevitable have to start come this fall. And maybe that’ll make me want to start saving up to enjoy those times without feeling like I have to hold back too much.

For now, at least, I’m going to cross my fingers and hope for the strength to find a middle path: not a compromise, as I think this Buddhist ideal is often misconstrued as, but a middle way as in a place where the current is the strongest… free from the debris of riverbank extremes… a place where I can balance work and play so that I’m spending my time, not selling it.

Wish me luck! =)

Me, trying to be buddhist (!)