Am I doing the right thing? (6/7)

In the last post I wrote about the complications of writers defining themselves as “writers”, because they probably don’t spend that much time per day actually writing. Is that what we are, what we mostly spend our time on?

As a 29 year-old, I’m treating this year as a dry run for the kind of adult I want to be in my 30s. One thing I’ve done, then, is reduce my social media time. I thought I was doing this to symbolically relegate social media’s relative importance in my life to the proportion of time I spent on it. But it’s not just symbolic, it’s the reality.

You are what you do. If you spend an hour a day comparing yourself to others on social media, you’re 1/24th a complete waste of time.

If your proportion is wrong, adjust it. Your body will make you keep doing stuff. You’re designed to do stuff! And you’re mostly designed to do stuff you enjoy. So if you minimise time spent on the stuff you thought would bring you joy but have since learned doesn’t, you will force yourself to find more enjoyable things to do.

Similarly, if you release yourself from thinking about things that are bringing you no good, healthier, nicer thoughts will fill your head.

(Letting go of crap friends makes space for good ones too. Though it might take you a while to find them!)

What you think of in your life as “an absence of that thing you have given up” is not an absence at all; the time is still there. You are still here. You will do better stuff.

The better stuff you do, the better you are as a person. Which, if you’re anything like me, is the goal encompassing the full subset of things you do day-to-day that express and manifest that. So it will make you happier, healthier, more fulfilled.

I’m doing my best to be my best and lead the richest life possible in the way that I define and redefine that.

In the last post, I’ll write about some of the nice ways in which we have influence in people’s lives, and why we really, indisputably matter.