Lack Of Motion Without Progress

Wanting to do more without knowing what to do, that's the best way to describe my practical self this past few days. I've experienced a dose of seriousness about the little things that I'm not quite sure where it's coming from.

The little things are many and varied. Subjectively, doing one or a very few of them doesn't seem to make a difference until I do many of them almost at the same time and notice how it reflects on the whole.

One aspect is choosing to show up for friends, keep contact and follow through with whatever they have going on.

This is a department I can excel at on a shorter time frame, say a few days or a week, get everything done that needs doing.

But you know how human nature is not that straightforward, something will always come up or down, and what should take a week ends up taking a month.

This same practical self will grow disinterested and bounce off in between such moments. Any type of gap puts it in an almost restless like state of reality. A ship losing its compass and aimlessly drifting off at sea is a good way to put it, here, I think.

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I don't quite understand yet why a lack of direction can cause so much restlessness for a "thing" that seemingly has so much energy to do.

Can't it just do stuff without needing a direction to do stuff? I think in the grand scheme of things, it's not that the direction matters as much as the meaning does, even when it's actually true that motion doesn't equal progress, what tends to matter is whether the motion is part of something or not.

Scaffolding

For example, a random motion can be exhausting in a way that purposeful motion isn't. I can walk ten miles with a destination in mind and feel accomplished. Walk the same ten miles in circles and I may want to lie down and never get up lol.

The physical output is clearly identical, however the former just doesn't work against my sense that what I'm doing matters.

That's the thing, isn't it? Not actually an energy problem. I have plenty of energy. It's a meaning problem and what I'm slowly figuring out is that I need scaffolding, something that holds the structure even when my attention drifts.

The drifting is going to happen, that's apparently non-negotiable, so the next to aim for is creating return points I can find my way back to.

Because this practical self surging with all this drive to do is not looking for tasks, really.

I think at this point in time that it's looking for belonging, contribution of sorts in the sense that motion connects to something beyond itself.

Sometimes, at the furthest back of my mind, I think when I show up for friends and follow through, I'm building evidence that I'm part of something that persists whether I'm having a good week or completely disappearing for ten days, instead of the obvious surface level interpretation of just completing social obligations.

Yes, that's another form of meaning making to limit the intensity of wanting to do more without knowing what to do.


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