I’ve been busy, to say the least. Numbers surround me for most of the day. I have tonnes of chores and reminders going on in the background. I wake up earlier than I would like usually, and when I do find a moment to sit down and reflect on things, the only reflection that manages to enter my headspace is that I’m tired and that I should get some rest.
Life has been banal not in terms of it being boring but just that it has been usual. I start my day with some music and reading. I get some exercise after I’m done with reading. Work is excellent; at least I feel so as of now. I sometimes study if I’m not tired enough. All in all, life is everything but eventful, and I don’t mean that in a negative sense at all.
Instead, there is so much happening throughout the day. The same string of tasks on a to-do list repeat over and over; the same picking up the laundry while getting home; the same finding time to get groceries between work and home. For the first time, in a long time, I find myself in so much movement, I barely stop to think.
I haven’t sat on the floor for a while. I haven’t lost myself for a while. I’ve just been busy.
I’ve been busy living a life I really enjoy. Sometimes, I stare at the sunset on my way back from work, and I feel wistful. I remember how only six months ago, I had enough time to sit and stare at it, you know?
But that’s precisely it. I don’t want to stare at the sunset for hours anymore. I want to look at it wistfully, as I pass it.
I’m not missing it; I’m just consciously changing how I look at it.
The only thing to not like about most days these days is that one idea that keeps reverberating through most media I’ve ever consumed — the trope of someone hating every day and the routine.
It baffles me that the only thing preventing me from having a wonderful day is usually the idea that writers and all people who pursue any art are not meant to have the normal.
So, I’ve decided to not live for labels anymore. I’m not a writer. I’m not on the hustle. I am, and I am every day. I do what I love, even if that is getting groceries or cleaning my apartment.
There’s this idea that was planted in my head back when I was an adolescent filled with angst that I have to be something. The something kept changing, but it has come to my realisation that as soon as I decide on a label, I subconsciously block everything else from my life.
This is the gap that has had me separating myself into two different lifestyles.
The introspective writer who takes long walks, gap years, writes, reads and thinks for hours versus the active learner who lives in the real world and who understands what people are and gives his best to the most mundane things in the world.
It is a gap that has always increased. To the point that I spent six months as one of those people and six months as another in the last year.
This is me trying to bridge that gap, and bring the halves into the same. This world does not need another Salinger living by himself in the country, and neither does it need another Gary promoting the hustle.
I’m not an artist who wants to quit his job to pursue art, and I’m not the professional who doesn’t stop to help another person because he’s on an important call. I’m just a guy trying to do the most he can every day.
I’m done with tropes; I’m done with clichés.