Human Dithering

Some self-help websites encourage people to get up and do things. They recommend that you stop sitting around, break out of the apathy and become a "human doing" instead of a human being.

Others recommend that you stop being a "human doing" - especially if all of your frantic activity is to avoid facing up to your issues - and learn to really be a "human being". GPYP calls this "making peace with the peace". It's learning to not need constant activity and fussing and people who make you crazy in order to feel fulfilled.

They're both equally valid points of view, and equally useful.

I think part of the problem I've had with my lifestyle ever since I left home is that I often live in a limbo between "human being" and "human doing". I have in fact been neither . . . I've been a "human dithering". I've spent so much time over the years just doing this and that and passing the time away. I've always called it "relaxing" but it's really not true relaxation, it's busy-but-not-active avoidance.

I want to spend less time as a "human dithering". Lots of the things I'm doing are going towards that (the degree, the choir, etc) but I also want to try to make it an integral part of my everyday life, not an extra-curricular activity. And I'm doing it, slowly but surely. My first conscious effort has been to make sure that I spend 1-2 hours doing stuff around the house every evening, instead of heading straight for the couch and the laptop and "relaxing" on the internet.

(Guess where I am now, and what I'm doing. Oh, the irony.)

This evening I spent two hours in the garden. I potted out ~20 petunia seedlings in pots and hanging baskets on my verandah (I bought 4 punnets of seedlings from a lady at school today, fundraising for the P&C), and likewise 6 tomato plant seedlings. Then I Had An Idea, and fought with a fairly scratchy tree to wind my new set of fairy lights into it. Then I dug a trench for the cord and buried it so I wouldn't trip over it. Then I switched it on, and went another round with the tree while I checked half the globes and replaced the ~5 that weren't working (I KNOW to check the globes before hanging the lights . . . oops). The net result is a whole lot of greenery and a very pretty tree :) And I spent my evening DOING. After I get off the computer and away from the TV, I'm going to commit to spending half an hour BEING.

Not dithering.