Pancakes and Resolutions

So I worked a 10-hour shift on Saturday from 2pm to midnight (the restaurant I work at was hosting a wedding), and seeing as I was about ready to shuffle off this mortal coil by the end of it, I decided that Sunday was going to be my official "day off". Of course, I still had to go in to work at 6pm that evening, but for me, days off are mostly about my mindset. I decided that I was going to be in no rush to do anything, I didn't have to get anything done, and god damn it I was going to be nice to myself!

Woke up at 11, had a shower, meditated, made some tea and a double batch of Lonely Girl Single-Serve Pancakes (yes, a double batch. I was hungry and these things are my lifeblood), and started The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace. I got it as a Christmas present from my parents but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until now. I'm quite enjoying it so far — it's interesting to read after having read Infinite Jest around this time last summer. You can tell it's written by the same guy but it's got a kind of lightness that I never really got from IJ. I don't think they can be compared in terms of quality or anything (although, let's be real, there will never be another book like Infinite Jest) but I'm finding it cool that you can tell the difference in the age and maturity of its author at the time of its writing.

Back to my original point here though — that made for quite a lovely morning, but the rest of the day kind of devolved from there. I certainly wouldn't say it was bad; it was quite good, and I think days like that are sometimes necessary to keep me from going off the deep end, but by the end of the night I knew why I can't give myself days off every day over summer vacation.

I'm a person who relies a lot on structure. I'm trying to break myself of that, because on the whole it keeps me from going outside of my comfort zone and is generally not something one should be totally dependent on. It is, however, still important to have a certain amount of structure to keep from drifting aimlessly without purpose or ambition. I read Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving last month and one of the passages I keep going back to is this one where he talks about how to concentrate (concentration or mindfulness being prerequisites for loving, which is a prerequisite for being):

"... To get up at a regular hour, to devote a regular amount of time during the day to activities such as meditating, reading, listening to music, walking; not to indulge, at least not beyond a certain minimum, in escapist activities like mystery stories and movies, not to overeat or overdrink are some obvious and rudimentary rules. It is essential, however, that discipline should not be practiced like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of one’s own will; that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behavior which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practicing it" (emphasis mine).

The point of structure is not to force yourself into things. The point of habit is not to make those things unconscious. Structure and habit should be used mindfully so that you end up enjoying and wanting to do the things that you know you should do — and being conscious of the choices you're making when you do them. When I get stuck scrolling endlessly through instagram, or stay holed up in my bedroom all day watching netflix, I know I'm not doing those things because I truly want to. I know they end up making me feel awful, and achieve nothing good in the long run, but I do them anyway because they're habits. I've learned to make those choices, to do the things that make me feel good in the short-term, but I don't have to stay there. I can choose to unlearn them, and make new, better choices; better habits. And they don't have to be externally forced on me through strict rules or structures. I just have to agree to try to do something else, and become cognizant of when I'm slipping back.

So really what I'm getting at with this is that I'm making some resolutions. Some things I've already started (like doing more yoga and learning French and writing more regularly), and other things I've been planning on doing for ages but haven't really gotten to yet (like going vegan and submitting some of my writing to various places). But I wrote them down on a piece of paper, folded it up and put it in my journal, and as of right now* I'm agreeing to try.

Here goes nothing!

- Ella

*although the going vegan thing is a little tentative for now until I move out at the end of August — the plan is to try my best but while my parents are still mostly responsible for our household food shopping, I'm happy enough with them accommodating to my being vegetarian