The brilliant illustration is made by CatF4ce on reddit.

Weekends have become somewhat anomalous and amorphous in their meaning and structure to me. Days blend into one another and structure is eroded by monotony. The constant feeling of stasis makes me anxious that I am not progressing, yet time flies past as hours turn into months. As with many topics nowadays, attention towards social media’s impact on civilization has been brought to light with a stylish and alarming Netflix documentary. Coincidentally, before its release I picked up the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport and breezed through the first part, essentially a written version of the new documentary The Social Dilemma. The usual advise followed: limit social media use, delete uneccessary apps, tailor your privacy settings, reduce screen-time etc. Ironically, the talk of social media makes me want to check it out more, and find out a bunch of threads where people discuss this, join in, fall down the rabbit hole. It’s the easiest way to talk about something interesting, right there and then when it’s fresh in your mind. I wonder how it used to be in the past, did people hold onto one or two interesting things and discuss them at length with friends and family? Did they come back to the same books and movies they had on tape, instead of waiting for the autoplay feature to suck us into another half watched/listenend alarmist doc that brings about a Twitter storm for a few days. It almost seems like a romantic fantasy, to read a book or watch a movie, to hold onto some parts that stuck with you for hours and days, to find those close to you who listen and are interested.

I’ve fallen off the wagon again, or however that saying goes. Things have been deteriorating. Self motivation is basically non existant, the only thing I’m really managing to stay consistent with is making my bed. I’ve once again got low energy, apathy. I don’t feel good or satisfied with doing things. One thing I’ve noticed for sure is that I’ve picked up on this much sooner than I would have previously.

I’ve been returning back to the presocratic schools and enjoying their metaphysical exploration for the nature of the universe. They resonate with my love of fiction and fantasy, the ubiquitous inclusion of the 4 elements in almost all fantasy involving magic, the themes of love and strife in almost all stories.

Fate and destiny, lofty words that can be used as a reason or as an excuse for events. In stories, it is the hero’s destiny to rise above evil, it is the villain’s fate to perish and fail. What about the rest? Does fate and destiny apply to all equally? Is there a quantum of destiny, can it be measured?

Things are pretty steady along. I’ve been finding myself thinking more about my physical health, and what I want to see in myself. In the past, I had exercise goals of cycle x km or lift x kg. Chasing numbers that in hindsight have very little meaning to me. I remember the few times that I attempted to consistently weight train, I had my training journal, had my sets and reps and kgs all written out. At the end of the week I’d see that 1kg extra I could curl or that 0.5kg extra that I could press. I think one of the reasons I wasn’t making progress is how meaningless a fixation on those numbers was. I wasn’t competing, didn’t have a set goal (apart from always lift more) and I was judging my progress based on numbers and not how I felt. This idea of gain and loss in exercise: gain muscle, lose fat. Gain strength, lose waist size. I am starting to stop thinking about exercise in this way and now focusing on how it makes me feel.

Another while, another long pause between posts. I still seem to return to this whenever something begins to go “bad” or feel off. I’ve been having some increase in anxiousness, the familiar jolts of electricity though my heart. I’ve become more jumpy and hypervigilant again.

In the past when faced with these feelings of anxiety I would sit down and run through a list of things I was thinking of recently until I received those pangs of adrenaline, that skipped heart beat. Then I’d say right, that’s the cause. Lets avoid it. A later strategy would be, instead of avoiding them, confront them and try to solve whatever was causing me anxiety. It was better than avoidance, but what happens when the issue can’t be solved? It would grow and become worse and worse. I found some solace and peace in the stoic view on control. If you have no control over something, there is really no reason to worry about it. You can kick and scream and fight, but in the end only you will be tired and sore. What you have control over (apart from in some neurophychiatric states) is your perception and reaction to an event.

“He has the most, he who is content with the least.”

Diogenes of Sinope

Once more I’ve been neglecting reflecting on myself. It’s easy to do when things are going well, and then to somewhat panic and look for the “emergency philosophy” button when things start to unravel a bit. I find myself being better at incorporating some stoicism in my life now. I’m still struggling with existentialism, but funnily enough stoicism is also helping in that regard. I’m happy that I have the energy and time to just sit and think every now and again.

Being a Doctor

It wasn’t until after I quit working in the HSE, that I realised I had been profoundly depressed. My tiredness, poor sleep and bad appetite were things that I attributed to my extensive overtime and amount of work. I thought that working 12-15 hour days would do this to me, and I should expect to always feel tired, sad since everyone says that training is full of long days and nights and sick patients. But now I see that should not necessarily be the case.

Today is a short one. I’ve been pondering over the usefulness of advice, self-help books and all that jazz. I’ve mostly been repulsed from these catchy titles, usually with a number of steps towards a better millionaire you. It seemed to me that while those authors have something to gain, they will pander to the masses in order to drive sales, this means books that won’t answer the difficult questions or push people away from their destructive behaviours. I’m sure that’s not the case for all of them, but I don’t want to put in the effort or time to find “the right steps” as seen on TV. Here’s why.

Today the Stoic quote I read was:

“A person who doesn’t know what the universe is, doesn’t know where they are. A person who doesn’t know their purpose in life doesn’t know who they are or what the universe is. A person who doesn’t know any one of these things doesn’t know why they are here. So what to make of people who seek or avoid the praise of those who have no knowledge of where or who they are?”

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