Why can I not stop working? Why do I feel ashamed or worthless or vulnerable if I switch from building or fixing or mowing to writing or painting or learning to code? I have learned how to feel okay with meditating and doing yoga and exercising. I have no idea how this has been accomplished. Somehow, I have given those activities a stamp of approval. But how many years will I need to spend dreaming of the day that I finally do all the cool things with this website that I want to do? Often, I have to literally exhaust myself physically with “real work” in order to “earn the privilege” or get approval (from who exactly?) to do those self-indulgent, silly, risky, non-identity-confirming activities like writing or painting or dare I say, living?
I’ve been a stay-at-home Dad for so long I can’t hardly remember who I was before this role. I have always hated the term stay-at-home Dad. It seems even worse to me than housewife. What would be a better term? Dad? House Dad? House-husband? Home-maker? Ray? Why not Raymond, I like Raymond so much more than Ray but yet I remain Ray. Do I understand anything about myself? Do any of us? Is anything knowable? Is anything real?
But, I digress, I cannot remember what it was like back when I was just a cog in the corporate machinery or even when I was a student. Was I similar….did I feel guilty (back then) whenever I wasn’t working? Is it as simple as I am always just finding the path of least resistance to soothe my endless anxiety? Digging holes to fill wheelbarrows in other to fill previously dug holes? Am I simply terrified of dying or do I conversely just really wish the big sleep would just get here already? Is there anything else in life worth pondering beyond why we resist so strenuously being present and living? Are others like this? If I keep jotting down the endless questions that float through my mind will I eventually find THE QUESTION? The question that will answer all the others with lightening speed and effortless beauty? Would I even want that? Is that what death actually is?
Why did I just begin researching income-oriented actively managed funds? Can I not even stay on task of exploring why I have such a difficult time staying on non-work task that I need to get back to mindlessly working on problems (are the problems even real)? Do I spend all my sleeping time dreaming up new problems to work on the next day so that I leave no time to actually live? Do I understand opportunity costs? No, I’m really asking damn it!
Do I have free will? Do any of us? Are we just a little bump in the giant sea of infinite wave function pre-written to do whatever the biochemical eigenvectors deem, well, eigen-like? What a comforting warm moist blanket that is. What a terrifying nightmare? The petite mort in all its manifestations is the stretch goal, at least for today.
