Thursday, March 16, 2006

Workaholic

First thought when waking up: work. Last thought when going to sleep: work. Half of waking time spent in: work, with the lovely exception of weekends. My dear brother sure was right to warn about the treadmill I was stepping on ;-) Good thing I happen to like most of the work I do, so far.

I've noticed yet another curious paradox: I'm both a workaholic (gotta do it all!! gotta have it perfect!! gotta do more!!) and a Very Lazy Person. Somehow it's different doing things when someone tells you to do them (and your paycheck and future career prospects kinda depend on it too), then doing things because you tell yourself to. The former is easier. Really, it should be the other way around. What am I, a slave with no autonomous will?? But then again, it was my very autonomous decision to go after that particular job in the first place. I guess on a grander scale I do manage to pull myself in certain directions, even though it doesn't always show in details: like, am I ever going to have a fantastically tidy apartment? Doubtful.

3 Comments:

At 17 March, 2006 10:54, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very good observations!

It's one aspect of the human condition to lead or to be lead. There's nothing in between. When we are born we begin to learn by imitating others.

Eventually it's just a question of how good followers we are if we are to lead one day. And also leaders are always lead by someone or something.

A rhetorical question for some contemplation:
Is it ever possible to ever attain a state where no one or nothing is leading you?

 
At 18 March, 2006 15:16, Blogger queerrel said...

Rhetorical or not, I'm still inclined to reply :-) I'm able to imagine attaining such a state of mind, where I'd observe rather than follow the track of thoughts and all the associations linked with the thoughts. In reality, that is as hard to do as is teaching the body to merely observe rather than react to various stimuli. After all, it's a survival mechanism.

Certainly both can be reprogrammed to react differently from before, once the reaction chains have been recognized. This slowly creates greater freedom from predefined destiny (meaning you can actually shape your future by influencing the present state), and results in being more or less led by yourself.

 
At 20 March, 2006 11:41, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Indeed. And a further thought on the subject:

Often when the concept of freedom is raised, it's automatically linked to the duality of leading / being led. If there is no way out of this duality (meaning that we are constantly at the same time leading something, and being led by something), then _freedom_ must be a question about whether we are able to choose by ourselves that which we are being led by.

...or maybe I've just had too much coffee today. :-)

And of course that the question if is it really possible to have too much coffee could be turned into a philosophical debate as well.

 

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