Notes from the Battlefield of Perceived Obligation

The phone near my desk, a shiny rectangle containing the totality of perceived obligations, obligations to my mother’s texts, or to my wife’s, or to the self-perpetuating need to regale a gaggle of digital strangers for hearts and likes with tales of the picayune and / or the dire: a conundrum that exists solely to be unsolvable, a self-perpetuating loop of distraction and abdication of purpose.

Solution: less.

Do less, read less (see Donald Hall quote of 26 April); recognize that these perceived obligations arose out of vulnerabilities birthed in the end of one iteration of life and are festering as the splinters left in your fingernails suppurate. Let go, pick them out. Prioritize what matters, what gives you purpose – not where you imagine yourself to be needed but where you are truly needed.

(There will always be dog pictures.)