Transcript

The Monotony · Wanzology

Yada, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Hello. Welcome to another episode of, uh, you guessed it. WANZOLOGY!! Yes. And I am your host, The Wanz! Coming at ya, almost at the longest week of my life, otherwise known as the month of January. And that realization that we're moving on to another month got me thinking about something, uh, that's been bugging me, and it's the monotony of it all. I mean, you get into these patterns where everything seems to be happening the same way, the same way, the same exact way, one day to the next. It doesn't seem like there's any variation in what the routine is. Think about it this way. You have a day job. You wake up and you get yourself ready to go to work, you get into whatever transportation you get into. You go to work. You spend your day at work, or your night, then you come home. When you get home, depending on what time of day it is, you decide what you're going to do next. But it's that, getting up in the morning, then going to work, then coming home, then deciding what you want to do. From a high level, that is the same pattern every day, except maybe weekends. Do you have that? What do you do when you have that? How do you gauge your monotony? How do you stay sane when it feels like you're in a hamster wheel? Just going, going, going, but never really going anywhere. Well, it's an interesting thing that we do as humans with time, we manipulate it to a certain degree because we can't, and this is a perception thing. We perceive time as passing, but it's a construct that's made by man for man. No other animal other than a human being has a concept of time. Dogs don't have a concept of time, cats, gerbils, birds, bugs, reptiles, none, only humans. Only humans worry about what happened yesterday, or five minutes ago. Humans are the only creature on the planet who wonder what's next, or plan their vacation six months in advance. And how do we get to that six month? How do we get there? Well, one day at a time. And that day is broken into hours, and the hours are broken into minutes, and the minutes are broken into seconds, and then there's milliseconds, but we won't go there. But having the construct of time, it can be either motivating or I’m having trouble thinking of the word. I just know that we play mind games with ourselves if we're not achieving something. Never realizing that the actual achieving part is a series of steps. It's a process. We may be in a part of the process where not much else can be done other than maintaining one's position doing whatever one is doing. Now if that persists over days or hours, it seems like you're not progressing. Doesn't seem like you're doing anything or going anywhere, because the monotony of the same thing happening over and over and over again becomes a bit frustrating. This morning, when I was thinking about this monotony thing, I started dissecting different parts of the last couple of days. My routine is pretty simple. Wake up, do my business, contact in, medications, make my bed, go and make breakfast, and then whatever's next on the list. But that first part I try to keep very consistent, because while I'm doing those things, I'm deciding what my priorities are for the day. What did I forget yesterday that I have to do? What do I want to have done by tomorrow or later in this very day? All that stuff is contemplated while I'm getting myself ‘pretty/ and making my bed and making some food. So what about you? Have you broken down your process enough to understand the monotony? And if it feels like you're not progressing or achieving, why do you think that? Question yourself, “Why am I thinking like that?”, because on deep reflection, when I asked myself that question, the answer was I don't know. I didn't know why. And so I thought about what I didn't know. And what I realized is, even though it seems like we're on the go and moving constantly and life is going really fast. it's not. We aren't. But our perception of what's going on changes depending on where we are in whatever process we're in the middle of , or processes, plural. It may feel sometimes like you're just manically going from here to there like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off and there are other times when it just seems like the second hand on the clock is moving slow as frozen molasses. But the only person who controls these perceptions is you. You ever notice when you're really busy at work, the day seems to go really fast? And when it's really slow at work, the day just drags and drags and drags on? This is a perception issue. It's not a problem, it's just an issue. When your mind gets bored, it makes things, it has ideas, and if you're me, you wonder about things. It's been said I'm a deep-thinker and a deep-feeler, and what I've figured out for myself, is I can change my perception of where I am in my process at any given time I choose. What that means is, even though it seems like I'm not doing anything, I know that I'm moving forward, and that centers on breathing, for me. As long as I'm breathing, I know time is passing. How fast or slow time is passing is irrelevant. The point is, it's passing. So whatever I'm ‘doing’ at the moment needs to be done, completed, put on the shelf, put a pin in it, come back to it, whatever, so that I can get on to whatever's next. That's the other thing about humans, humans seem to be the only species on the planet with a ‘to-do’ list. You ever sit and watch a squirrel? I mean, just watch it. It will go around. It doesn't seem like there's any rhyme or reason to what it's doing it's just kind of wandering around everywhere. Sometimes it finds something and picks it up and puts it down, and then it climbs a tree, and then it comes to the end of the branch, and then it rolls around this, and then it does this and that, but it has its own process. And it's driven by instinct of what to do next. If it's a certain time of year, they're gathering food. If it's a certain time of year, they're finding a mate. Humans, very different. There's not a lot of instinct when it comes to being a human. Humans are raised to use their brain to figure things out. What am I gonna do next? What am I gonna do tomorrow? What happened with what I did yesterday? These are things that we do all the time. And when it seems like nothing's going anywhere, even though you keep doing the same things, it's monotonous. You feel like you're not progressing. You feel like nothing's getting done. You feel almost hopeless, and that is dangerous. For me anyway. Maybe you have a similar experience, I don't know, but I can tell you this, if it feels like I'm not progressing, then immediately I go into being discouraged and I start thinking about things that I haven't done, or what I could be doing, even though I'm stuck doing whatever it is I'm doing. For me, that's like, when I'm vacuuming, I ask myself, why am I not unloading the dishwasher? And when I'm unloading the dishwasher, why am I not cleaning the sink? And when I'm cleaning the sink, why am I not picking up papers and sorting and putting things away? And when I stop and look around, all those things become overwhelming because I haven't ‘done’ (meaning completed) any of them. This is the dangerous thing about monotony. In the summertime, when it gets to be about mid to late August, people call those the proverbial ‘dog days of summer’. Now, after Martin Luther King's birthday, the next two weeks of January are what I think of as the ‘dog days of winter’, because it just seems like you get done with New Year's and then MLK, you have that day off, and then time just seems to stop, or at least decrease in progression. It's annoying. Go to the store, and it's like, oh, look, all the Valentine's stuff is up. Oh, that's next month. Seems like it's an eternity away, an eternity. So, what are you going to do? How are you going to perceive and deal with your monotony? What I'm going to do is become very detail oriented in my process. It's not a matter of going through my routine and putting on clothes, making bed. But it which clothes? It's meticulously and in great detail making my bed, all the edges are straight, things are even, pillows fluffed. Arranging things in my room, shoes, putting clothes away maybe. Haha, who does that? The monotony in a general sense is good because we know that in the mornings, generally speaking, that's breakfast time. So you do all the things around breakfast, you get done with breakfast, and it's off to work, and you do your thing at work, you have a lunch, and then you come back for the afternoon work thing, and then you go home. But inside of all of that, no day is exactly like the one before it, is it? No. Our perception of monotony is a trick. It's a trick meant to distract us from how much we are actually accomplishing. Even though it feels like you're not doing anything, you've done stuff. When it feels like nothing's going on, lots of things are going on. And it's up to you to change your perception of things. Think about this, even though it feels like nothing is happening with you, you know full well you are not the only person around. You have relations, you have friends, you have acquaintances, strangers doing exactly what you're doing. Probably not as well as you are, but they're doing it. You are in control of your own perception. And when it feels like you have no control over your perception, that's exactly when you have the most control. Even though things feel monotonous, keep in mind that they're actually not. The construct of time waits for nobody, and something is always going on. I just wonder, do we take enough time to actually perceive what's going on? Nice thing to think about. May you perceive accurately and proceed expeditiously and get the things done that you want to get done. If it feels monotonous, in my opinion, it’s because that's the way you're thinking about it. So flip the script and think differently. Thanks for joining me for this episode of WANZOLOGY!! I really hope that things are going well for you and I will see you next week. Well, I won't see you, but you know what I mean.