These weeks really do pass too fast.
Am I starting to sound repetitive yet? I feel repetitive.
I did do a couple of interesting things this week, but didn't post about them when I did, and as time passed they grew less inspiring to write about. Instead, as the week comes to an end I delve into the obligatory weekly blog, conjuring the routine and rushed up summary of weekly does and events as always.
It does serve certain purpose having an ongoing overview of my life, on a weekly basis. It's something I might derive useful insights from in the future, as might anyone else following these rambles, but at the same time it's a chore, and since it feels that way it serves less purpose. It's gone from being an extensive recollection of events to something just to keep going. To keep writing. To keep the tradition alive. From something that summed up the week with introspective, accomplishments and optimisms, to just a repeat of old routine over and over.
I've been going with these weekly posts almost every week since 2013, as well as back in 2008. In the beginning it felt like a good way to get organized, but eventually started feeling more like an obsession, and the focus moved from a new week! to another week... I stuck to it even when I didn't feel like it, though I think it started feeling conclusively outplayed some time last year. I tested swapping out the Week ## - Title format to simply titles for a few weeks, but that didn't change the fact that they were still weekly posts. They just made them harder to differentiate from normal posts - which might've been what I wanted to make them then, but I fell back to the old routine and kept going.
Even as I write this I feel compelled to write this like the routine weekly post. It sticks. I want to say that I spent most of today watching music videos, and how I've played out the remaining episodes of DOOM again, and am on my way through the second game today. I was planning to take on TNT after that, but I'm growing bored. The levels of the second game are often erratic and open, without the linear design that makes it easy to find the exit. I end up beating the bad guys as best as I can, and then just clip my way through walls in search for the way out, at which point the journey loses it's appeal. When I beat it like this it won't be beating it for real, and if I'm playing it just to play it through as it's supposed to be played - something I'm honestly not sure I've done with any other than the original three episodes, albeit many times over with those, it feels like a lost cause. Why play a game if it isn't fun?
And that's about the point of this week's summary... or lack thereof. Why am I focusing on superficial accomplishments when there are so many more inspiring things that I could, and want, to do? That's why it feels like time just flies away. And does. If there's time over I make up trivial tasks to fill the gaps. Inconspicuous but highly irrelevant spin-off goals that get me nowhere, and in the long run don't do me much good. It's really about more than the blog, but the routine weekly posts feel like counterfuel to a lack of creative fire.
Of course there are exceptions. It would be more optimistic to mention that I went to a light therapy cafe this Monday - which was great, warm and rejuvenating, and that I spent most of Saturday on an unexpected trip to Värmdö. I thought about writing about the light therapy cafe the same day I went there, but time was in short supply and I thought I'd better leave it for the weekend. Yesterday I pondered posting about the other trip, and about the recent Cloudbleed incident that had me checking my passwords the whole weekend, but didn't, because why not post all of that at once. Now. In the summary.
If there was no later maybe I'd have written those posts right away, and with the details fresh in mind they'd have been ten times as good as if I'd recollect them now. Then again maybe I wouldn't get to writing them anyway, and without a weekly post like this you'd never have been the wiser what I'd been up to. But does that really matter? I feel like I'll want to write a blog about events that I appreciate, but if I play through a few episodes of DOOM in spontaneous obsession: what's that to you? I'm sure you'd rather read my impressions on the new game, which I summed up pretty well when I finished it a couple weeks back, but didn't get to posting since guess what? I tumbled back into my routines. The weekly posts that take up all that time, and the false accomplishments I make for myself so that I may collect them in this cage I've made for myself. If that is why.
Writing continuously might feel like a good thing - a routine accomplishment of content. Routine. Comfort zone. Same thing. Gotta get out of that zone to get in my zone and stay creative, so that's what I'm doing now. The blog in itself is it's own comfort zone of course, but I hope it's a larger zone. One where you can travel around and see new things, and be both comfortable and inspired at the same time.
Wait, I take that back. Routine and comfort zone is not the same thing. Is this blog a comfort zone? Is it a zone, and the routine a comfort? Only thing I know for certain is I find both comfort and calamity in my habits, and I'm a very habitual person. I also know that the longer it goes the harder it is to break a habit - especially the bad ones.
This might not class as your typical bad habit, but it's a time-consuming and unnecessary one. This car's pretty much out of gas at this point anyway. It's time for a brake. It's about time to stop doing things I've been doing too long and embark to the more inspiring ground: that of spontaneous and occasional writing, like how I used to do. Writings whenever inspiration strikes instead of the scheduled and omniscient ones. Or if spontaneity fails: writing with a goal.
I should probably let a bunch of other routines go the same way as these weekly posts, like the Musicalish ones, but they might still serve a purpose. I still have music videos I want to share, and posting them one at a time would flood the blog and leave you with little other content. Without the weeklies... will there be other content? I hope so. I'm pretty excited about letting go of this habit, and that seems like a good sign.
I haven't posted a thing on the blog since last week, which goes to show how far gone this thing is. I've written a few drafts, though, and rid myself of a few old ones too in a vain attempt at clearing out everything unfinished and feeling like I have it under control.
But control's not having a clean and empty post draft page: it's about being able to sit down with a blank text box when you have something to write about, and write the shit out of that text box then and there. That feels good. That's a feeling I've been starting to forget, but it's all coming back. Like riding a unicycle.
Here's a link to last week for the last time. If you want to skim through my life in a straight line in the future, you'll have to do so via the yearly archives, or the life category. There's no way to do both... yet, but until there's demand for it, that's one unnecessary project I'm not even starting with. And if this whole non-weekly thing doesn't work out as I expect it to... well then, better fuel the car and get driving again. There's always room for a follow-up post debunking my thoughts and theories in this one if they were all wrong.
Maybe I'm just leaving my new habits behind to jump back to my old ones: that of writing whenever I have things to write, and feeling like I have to write as soon as I do. And writing way too long posts because self-reflection keeps feeding you new realizations, making it difficult to find a suitable place to stop analyzing and just leave it be. If there was no more there wouldn't be more to write about after all, but for now I think I'll leave it here. Optimistically. And incredibly run-on.
I feel like I'm climbing onto new ground. Like something great is just waiting around the corner. A bit like I used to feel with each New Year... before I turned those into routine too. If getting rid of these weekly routine's is a boulder off my back, I'll push off the New Year Mountain next. Week 9, and all the other ones in line! It's time.
