Leisure over work
Yugen 001 / August 16, 2024/ Córdoba, Spain
I recently finished reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami, and in this book, he shares a passage about his experience as a student that I felt particularly connected to.
“In general, from elementary school to university, with very few exceptions, I never really felt interested in the studies they made you do there. Convincing myself that these were things I had to do, I managed to get by and made it to university, but there was hardly a single time when studying actually seemed appealing to me.
As I mentioned above, reading these lines feels like putting my own student experience into words. I was never interested in any of the subjects taught in the classroom. Only when summer arrived did it become my time.
My time to learn something new at my own pace, without anyone telling me what I had to do. I learned to program one summer and how to create photo montages with Photoshop another one. Many of the things I learned during that time are what allow me to live the life I have today, and it all came from that moment of leisure.
To say that I didn’t learn anything in school would be a lie. However, to say that I never learned what I wanted to learn is quite true. While I understand the purpose of schools, trying to standardize a process that should be personal for each individual based on their interests is bound to fail.
I’ve always felt that in our early years, a series of threads form around us, representing the interests to which we are most predisposed, based on our inherent nature.
Many of those threads won’t develop due to a lack of time, resources, or courage, and they’ll gradually break as the years go by. But there are others we can nurture, and when we pull on one of them, we instantly feel that what we’re doing makes us feel good, even if we’re not great at it.
It’s something that becomes a natural part of who we are.
In that rabbit hole, we feel at ease. We feel secure and keep moving forward through it. And once we return to the outside, our perception of the world has changed. We see it with new eyes.
What we see of the world is a reflection of who we are at that present moment. There’s nothing more to it. So, when we start pulling on a new thread, we begin to become more aware of everything surrounding it. It’s like when someone starts exercising—their whole life begins to change to accommodate that new focus.
And that’s the beauty of those threads—they’re available to us at all times. We just have to pull on them, untangle them, and lose ourselves with our eyes closed. Basically, we have to make room for them.
Now that summer has returned, it’s been a moment to pull on some of those threads. It’s a moment of leisure. I’ve been drawing, painting, and reading, simply for the joy of it.
We’ll see where that takes me.
I wrote a lot in July
During July, I tried to challenge myself to avoid overthinking by writing every two days.
My idea was to continue that exercise for the entire summer, but in the end, I wanted to focus on other things, and it requires a lot of time to write something remotely good every two days. If you didn’t have the chance to read it and want to check it out, here are all the articles I wrote:
- Optimize towards commitment.
- Schopenhauer is badass.
- Where is your Ithaca?
- They’ve ruined the experience of discovering new things for us.
- Songs of Challenge.
- Our life is compound interest.
- Rebellion, freedom, and passion.
- Do it for yourself.
- Part I - Keys Your Doctor Won’t Tell You for Good Health.
- Put Something Back.
Membership is my way
Today I just read a quote that said:
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
I have always wanted to start something, though I’ve never really known what. I’m not particularly interested in business per se, and the more corporate side bores me a lot.
After a few years of asking myself many questions, I believe that today I have some answers.
One of the things I discovered this year is that creating is what I enjoy the most. It’s in the process of turning an idea into something real—whether it’s drawing, writing, or building applications—that I feel most like myself.
That’s when I started thinking about how I could do this full-time.
One of the most viable, yet complicated, ways I know is through a membership model—having people fund your work with their money.
It’s definitely complicated, but I’m not going to shy away from trying.
Everything starts with more questions, and some questions I want to find answers to and create work around are:
- How can you find focus for your creativity in this constant input world?
- How can you use technology in a more effective way?
- How can you reconnect with nature?
- How can you recover your health?
I’ll keep you posted because this newsletter is part of it.
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