Decide What You Want

This week I am going to let everything sit to the side.

I am going to pretend that I have everything I want in life.

Let’s see how that goes over the next few days.

I will be practicing this idea all week, and if any perceived gap arises, I may write about it, too.

Yesterday, I was sharing how I am not sure what I am doing with music. Perhaps I need a bigger why.

A why points toward a mission or a vision.

One of my challenges with vision setting is that I start thinking things are not quite right, and therefore, I need to take steps 1, 2, and 3 to fix the situation.

A mission is more palatable to me, but it also requires action.

If you want to get from point A to B, you must take action.

That is part of the problem. I am not in the mood to take action this week.

Maybe Point A is exactly where I want and need to be right now.

Yesterday, I did drive from Point A to B.

I drove 11 hours to visit my family in the city where I grew up.

I had some ideas about what I wanted to do while I was here, but I am letting those go.

Honestly, all I want to do is go with the flow.

Therefore, that is what I intend to do.

What I want more than anything is to relax.

I want to avoid feeling rushed, cajoled, pressed, or stressed.

I just want to be.

This is likely what I have needed but haven’t taken the time to do since leaving my corporate job over five years ago.

Oh, sure, I’ve done some fun things and partied a bit every so often.

but there has always been that “what do I need to do next?” stress hanging over my head.

Basically, I haven’t gone all Timothy Leary on myself yet.

Tune in, turn on, and drop out, dude.

That doesn’t mean I will be engaging with psychedelics this week, but I am going to pay a lot of attention to how I am feeling and perceiving things.

That is the tune in part of this experiment.

And I am going to see what turns me on.

What gets me excited, and what do I really want to do each day this week as I visit family?

Finally, I am going to drop out for a week.

That is, I am going to completely shut off all expectations of myself besides these three things:

• I will continue to post a new blog article each day.

• I will take three walks each day.

• I will track my calories and protein to make sure I am not overindulging in foods that will put me over my target weight.

My mom has a doctor’s appointment later this morning.

I am going to go with her and my sister, not because they need me to go, but just because I can and I want to do it.

I just want to be free to do so, is what I mean.

What I had noticed was that voice in my head that says something like, “Oh, you could get some more blog articles written while they are doing that.”

That’s exactly the “thing” I am wanting to “drop” this week.

It’s an example of the form of “dropping out” I will be practicing over the next seven days.

Well, that’s today’s article.

It’s not much, but it’s what I wanted to share today.

I don’t think you need the acid to tune in, turn on, and drop out.

That would probably get in the way.

All I want to do is be phenomenologically present to life this week and see what happens.

Tomorrow, I will report back on how it went.