In Sickness and In Health

So, as often happens when I start a new self-improvement project, almost immediately a surprising and challenging wrench gets thrown into it. In this case with my 75/25 Create/Consume project, my goal is to create art 75% of the time and consume art and information only 25% of the time. The wrench is that I'm not feeling well, and when I'm not feeling well my tendency is to read or watch TV. I certainly don't want to draw or paint or collage or even write. I just want to rest and be passive and try to distract myself from feeling like crap.

At first it wasn't an issue. Yesterday I came home from work and had a bath and took some medicine. In the bath I don't really read anymore. I've actually found that I prefer to just zone out. To "hit the mmong" as they'd say in Korea.* But after the bath I lay in bed, and I wasn't quite sleepy enough to sleep, but I also wasn't quite feeling up to making art.

So immediately I used up all my remaining consumption minutes on re-reading "A Feast for Crows"*. It was immensely satisfying. I was thoroughly immersed in and distracted by the book. I was feeling no pain. Then the time ended.

I did go to sleep soon after, but usually I would have had no gap between reading and bed. This time I had to fill it up with something. So I did a Buddhist meditation I'd learned in "A Path With Heart" by Jack Kornfield, where you focus on the pain in your body, but  you try to focus on it as an impartial observer without trying to fix it. I've done this meditation in the past and it's very effective. A lot of times by being present with a pain in your body, but not focusing on doing something about it, you seem to unclench the muscles in that area and allow that area of pain to reintegrate with your whole body again. By focusing on the pain in a non-attached way you can actually lessen the pain. In a way, it is the opposite of distracting yourself from the pain through reading or another consuming type of activity.

In any case, a little of that meditation put me to sleep. Today I woke up still not feeling very well. I didn't make art. But I also didn't consume TV or books like I would have done before this project. Instead I slept and slept and slept. I ate breakfast and cuddled with my cat. I ate lunch and got ready for work. And it was fine. I didn't need to distract myself. Each moment was pretty fine just the way it was.

I did read at work today - and it has become a delight. I appreciate reading more. I am savoring the words more now that there are fewer of them streaming in. I am chewing on sentences, re-reading the really good ones.

But even with this renewed delight in reading, when I came home, I did not feel as much temptation to consume. In fact, lying in the bath I could hear Lee watching "The Young Turks" in the other room, and it felt so noisy and invasive that I just started singing pop songs, eventually singing them underwater.*** The bath made me feel a lot better, and here I am in bed, but this time creating something.

Anyway, the wrench has been thrown in, and I've dealt with it. I do admit that I did some medical googling yesterday and today (I allowed myself some medical googling as a necessary information look-up because I cannot currently go to a doctor). However, I may have medical googled excessively. At a certain point, you find one home remedy, you try it, you call it a day - this goes back to the point I made in my last post. Anyway, all in all, I feel good about this new way of dealing with being sick. I feel good about the project. I hope you're all feeling well.

*There are actual competitions for who can maintain the state of mmong (roughly "doing nothing, thinking nothing") for the longest in Korea.



**By the way I have no idea why so many ASOIAF fans don't like this entry in the series. It would be amazing even just for the descriptions of Oldtown and Braavos. And you get Brienne and Sam and Cersei POV chapters. Did I mention Brienne? I'll mention her again. And I'm only a few chapters in and it might already even be my new favorite. Anyway, if you don't care about Game of Thrones or A Song of Ice and Fire, I apologize, but you did see that the footnote was related to that, right?

***I've determined, by the way, that if I ever have dementia the last thing I'll remember are the complete lyrics (down to the exact inflections) of "Like a Virgin." So if I'm ever senile just tell the people taking care of me to set a karaoke machine up in front of me, and there will be no problems.

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