💾 Archived View for benj.smol.pub › on-waiting captured on 2021-12-05 at 23:47:19. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
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A few months ago my wife and I decided to move from the West coast to the Midwest, and that is kind of a big and stressful process.
To top that I decided to put out my resume "just to see"... and amidst moving I've been doing a bunch of interviews, as if moving alone wasn't stressful enough.
My point is not to say brag about interviews or whatever, but to note a tendency that I've see on myself, that is, when I'm anxiously/stressed waiting for something, waiting becomes incredibly difficult and I'll resort to extreme measure, even if they create even more stress, in order to busy myself while waiting, to ignore or shush the anxt of waiting.
Now, I find that quite particular because during my college years when there was a deadline there was also something to be done and thus playing video games to medicate the anxiety) instead of working on the assignment was procrastination.
But now when there's waiting and there's no clear "thing to be doing", when there's just restless waiting, filling that time with other stuff, given that normal day-to-day stuff still leaves too much time for "waiting", is that procrastination too?
Another example would be when I'm waiting for a package, something that I'm exited about. That waiting is so hard for me and thus I'd be at my most inventive coming up with stuff to do! Learn a new language? sure! Rewrite emacs? Obviously NOW (while waiting for the package) would be the time! Improve my handwriting? Learn French? Pick up gardening? YES!
The issue is that those fillers are actually things that I DO want to do, but using them to just fill waiting time makes for a very half-hearth attempt at whatever task, and as soon as the waiting is done, the fillers are over too.
Maybe I should find fillers that I care less about? Maybe there's a better way to wait?
I don't know...
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Send me a message at benj AT sdf.org :-)