Vacation cat is vacationing

I haven’t written my morning pages in more than two weeks. I’ve decided I’m okay with that. I’ve been reading, baking, spending time with friends and family (and kittehs! — who got a bath today, poor dears), sorting through old papers, and processing the world in ways that don’t involve filling up pages in a notebook or sketchbook. Previously I would have been really stressed out and down on myself for not creating, but right now I’m just letting myself be. As they say in yoga, where I am in this moment is just fine.

I’m too hard on myself, a fact I’ve known for a long time. But, having finally realized that not making art on any given day doesn’t mean I’m doomed as an artist, I’ve decided to stop emotionally flagellating myself. Beating myself up doesn’t make me work any harder, but it does make me tense and upset, and I don’t need that.

Huy gave me a really perspective-making book for my birthday: The Time Paradox by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd. Zimbardo and Boyd are psychology scholars who argue that changing our perspective on time can help us make more of what we’ve got. The book was both more and less life-changing than I thought it would be, but I think it might also be the kind whose wisdom sinks in slowly. I’ve certainly been thinking about it a lot since finishing it two days ago, and I’ve been thinking a lot more about how I spend my time.

Here’s one cool bite from the book:

As we are indoctrinated into the ways of the future-oriented world, we are taught to undervalue pleasure and to value hard work. We learn that the right way to do things is to finish work first and then play–if there is still time. We learn ‘Clean your bedroom’ or ‘Finish your peas’ and ‘Then you can go out to play.’ This sequencing is okay when you are a kid and your entire to-do list consists of 1) clean bedroom and 2) eat peas. As an adult, because you never make it more than third of the way down your to-do list, you tend to give yourself little time for happiness.

Finding time for fun has never been my problem, but reading this made me realize that I do tend to hold myself to rules I learned in childhood — particularly since I was often chastised as a child for not following those rules, so I now feel like atoning for this will solve my problems — and that those rules aren’t all applicable to my adult life. I need to rewrite the rules of proper living to suit myself now, and not be so rough on myself for the little missteps and growing pains that come along with this process.

In related news: I’ve started meditating for a short while before bed, and this has made a huge difference in the quality of my sleep and how my body feels when I wake up the next morning. I sit in bed in the dark, wrapped up in one of the warm Mexican blankets I bought on Olvera St with birthday money from my family, breathe, and clear my mind. When I find myself more sleepy than aware, I lie down, curl against Erik and drift off — and wake up the next morning more refreshed than I’ve been in months.