The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
A few days ago, I spent the weekend at my friend’s house.
I’ve been thinking of going somewhere to disappear to.
A small town in the Philippines perhaps, unfortunately, I couldn’t decide where and nobody’s available.
Long story short my friend was available but he’ll just be at home so I went there.
Minimalist Birthday Party
To my surprise they threw a small party for my and have me a minimalist gift.
The party was nothing fancy, but its very memorable and its the most fun I had in a long time.
My favorite part?
Just us friends hanging out, a couple of drinks, stories.
I’ve been to a lot of parties but for me this is what I want.
Too often we are consumed with the distractions and formalities of what a party should be.
I beg to differ.
We hanged out and mostly just talked.
It was the most fun I had in a long time.
The empty room
They let me stay in an empty room with just a sofa-bed and a beautiful lamp where they left me alone to write and do nothing.
The best part was that the change of scene allowed me to rethink my strategies and priorities.
Its amazing what spending time in an empty room with a lot of free space can do to you.
At that moment I felt peace, clear thinking and relaxed attitude which was nice.
I ended up thinking, writing and just bumming around while in the empty room.
The Change of Scene
The change of scene allowed me to be refreshed and excited about what to do next with my life.
I even got to sort out my plans and I’m fairly optimistic about life in general.
I ended up deciding to do this at least once a month.
The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
Overall my weekend was fantastic.
I’ve been living my life creating habits and forming routines to automate boring tasks and stuff like that and I learned that breaking routines were so much fun.
Last night I got myself a bottle of an Alcomix drink and got one before going to sleep.
I look forward to doing more things like these and sharing my stories about it.
What routines do you plan to break to enjoy the “sweetness of doing nothing?”
Updated: Wednesday, August 29, 2018 and notes from Kevin of the present day:
Note, “The Sweetness of Doing Nothing,” I later found out was a line from the movie, “Eat, Pray, Love.”
I have mixed feelings about that movie.
I’m extremely upset about how the female lead, left her partner because she felt like traveling to Italy, India and I forgot the other place.
As someone who had experienced being left behind by a partner who’m I expected to be with me for life, this conjures up a lot of horrible emotions and images in my mind.
I’ve moved on but I still experience nightmares and “PTSD-like” panic attacks whenever I recall my past.
The movie was valuable because of the slow down and enjoy life message in the Italian story arc but the whole abandonment of relationships on a whim is something that’s foreign to my values.
I grew up in a single mom family so what I longed for as a kid was parents who never gave up on each other.
My heroes growing up were men who sacrificed themselves to save their partner or the “more hardcore,” men who lived the rest of their lives to honor their partner.
I’m a guy so sleeping around isn’t a foreign concept to me and I’m tempted from time to time.
Despite all that, finding someone whom I’ll stay with for the rest of my life and suffer with is something that I want in the end.
That’s the outcome that I want.
My father recently passed away.
On his last few days, I, my younger brother and my mom as well as “mom number three” took care of him.
My prayers to get reconciled with him got answered.
For two days, at thirty two years old, after praying for almost a decade, I had my family together.
Then he died.
I was holding his hand on the ICU.
It suddenly became cold and sweaty.
I saw the heart-rate monitor doing crazy jumps.
I alerted the medical staff.
They rushed him to the Angiogram machine to figure out what’s going on.
He went into cardiac arrest.
I watched the doctors revive him for forty minutes.
I watched the life left his body.
I lost the strength in my legs and was forced to sit down.
That was the final chapter of my story with him.
The rest will just be flashbacks.
I dwell on death a lot.
It keeps me sober to the “end game” of life.
I recently wrote this on my facebook.
“Fantasize about your death, disaster, ruin, imagine all sorts of misfortune happening to you and the people that you care about the most. Do this every day. Visit every funeral and hospital. Stop praying for health, safety and protection. Get intimate with what the end looks like. Only then, will you be sober enough to realize how most of the things you go after are distractions and what genuinely matters to you, what you sincerely desire as well as the path will be revealed.”
I’ve gone off topic here. Haha.
I’ll see you on my next post.
Thank you for reading.
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