There's something therapeutic about tracing lines up and down a large, open floor with a vacuum cleaner, hoovering up dust and debris, returning the area to a condition of baseline cleanliness. It's one part of my work day that I've never approached with any amount of reluctance. There's a clear set of goals involved with the task, completing the task is an entirely straightforward endeavor and there's a modest sense of pride I can bask in when the job is done, however brief it may be. Cleaning the gym floor provides me with a level of cache in the local community, even if some visitors won't ever notice. Teenagers who shoot hoops, schoolchildren who practice their softball pitches indoors and older adults who engage in several evening rounds of pickleball can always expect a clean environment under my watch.
I suspect much of the work I do throughout my day is entirely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, potentially counterproductive to achieving some distant vision of a better world that will most likely never come to fruition. I'm sure that many people feel this way under the weight of the modern economy. It's a sad state of affairs when the jobs that contribute most directly to the betterment of everyday people's lives are some of the lowest paying, least respected occupations imaginable. Even if it's for just a few hours a night, a few nights a week, I derive a considerable amount of value from tidying up a public space for people I see face-to-face all the time—especially compared to endless amounts of fulfilled paperwork in service of a bunch of faceless people I will never meet.
The physical act of cleaning has similar qualities to writing these monthly journal entries. I know what I have to do to get things finished, even if I don't always feel up to putting in an honest effort. I also know it's an activity in service of something directly involved with my life, even if that thing is just me. The act of writing down my thoughts and forcing myself to engage with a focused activity for an extended period of time feels like cleaning out my mind. I have to find a way to weave a narrative from a bunch of disconnected, sometimes mind-numbingly boring life events taken from a snapshot-sized amount of time. I have to think critically about why things are the way they are, and hold myself accountable for my actions. There's a sense of wiping the slate clean when it's all done.
Over the coming weeks, I am sure there will be a lot more cleaning to do. I've got to keep up the momentum of positive change I've enacted in my life. Some tasks have become mindlessly routine, but in other ways I am seeing diminished returns from my work. I'm struggling to get myself motivated to put effort toward creative projects, and now with my day job picking back up for the year, there's going to be less time for me to be in the right headspace. A week of reigning my sleep schedule back in has left me exhausted, and so things naturally must grind to a halt until my body adjusts. Even before this, I'd wake up most days with little to no energy or enthusiasm to tackle what's ahead. I frequently experience afternoon fatigue despite my exercise and diet routines being in check. My mood can be unpredictable, though I try to bottle it up as best I can for the benefit of those around me. The cold weather that has kept me cooped up inside surely has much to do with all of this, but it feels like there's more to it than that.
Lately, there's been all kinds of negative stimuli coming from outside my small bubble. We're going through another round of doom and gloom related to national politics and societal decline here in the USA, at least, those of us who aren't willfully blind to what's unfolding. I don't want to focus too much on this here, it's just becoming difficult to avoid these hopeless thoughts about what lies ahead. I've made an active choice to engage less with political media over the last handful of years. Despite that, I think a morbid curiosity will always exist inside me—if only to get a head start on mentally preparing for our shitty future. I have to remind myself I'm currently living in what will someday be considered the good old days, but with that comes another reminder of the grim place we are all headed toward.
It's important not to get stuck in a land of hypotheticals, especially if time is as precious as it seems. I refuse to be like so many people I see online who wallow in the misery of the moment. I will approach these events with a realistic viewpoint, keeping my priorities at the front of my mind as I go. It's not like I'm in a terrible situation, and I'm strong enough to handle further personal struggle if it comes to that. I've shaped my life around minimizing costs and I'm experienced enough by now to know what I have to do to get by.
That said, I'm still learning. There will always be room for personal growth, and I'm hoping to put more time toward this in 2025 and beyond. I had an epiphany while I was reading a book recently, though the full realization was a bit delayed. I've written in the past about how my mind races in the middle of the night while I lie in bed. I believe this happens almost exclusively because I don't give myself enough time to be bored, to engage in contemplative thought during the day. I like getting immersed in rigid routines outside of work, if only because I get anxious when it feels like those routines could be broken permanently if I don't constantly keep them up. I also spend quite a lot of my free time looking at a screen, browsing the internet, playing a mindless game, what have you. Taking extended time to unpack my thoughts and write them down makes this clear, I need to refine my ability to put focused attention and brainpower toward something, anything, if I want to start reaching toward bigger goals.
An immediate goal of mine—one that will feed into these yearlong goals I talked about in the last post—is to spend more time just sitting around thinking. As the weather warms up, I am going to spend more of my free time outside at a nearby park or nature preserve. I'll take my notebook or laptop with me, but I will also just wander around casually or sit for a while, gazing upon Earth's natural beauty as I ponder things. I believe doing this more often will help me get to know myself better, to think more clearly and come back home with renewed purpose. I'm looking forward to chronicling the progress on this, soon.