Chicago Reflection #2

A difficult thing for me is keeping my mind moving in active directions, as apposed to passively waiting for things to come to it.

I grew up in a quiet house, where watching TV and playing video games were almost always okay. I have strong memories of settling in each night at 7pm to watch TV for 2-3 hours before going to bed. Every night. I had plenty of activities outside my home to keep me active, but once inside, my eyes glazed over and my brain turned into passive mush.

When I’m passive, I’m waiting for things to come to me and I’m grumpy towards
anything and anyone asking me to break out of my rut. Early on, the depressing isolation I created for myself in college felt like a tomb.  The overwhelmingly active environment sent me spinning back to my dorm room to watch TV and cruise online (but not, sadly, to study).  People were always coming and going, and the only way to fall into my passive glaze involved isolating myself from their energy. That isolation became suffocating and only with the help of God and good people did I manage to break out of my stupor.

I’m not nearly that passive anymore, and I’ve come a long way in the last 10 years, but remaining active can still be challenging for someone who’s natural fallback is passivity. I’ve found things like having a people-centered job, exercising and not watching too much TV help me remain active, but lately I’ve been feeling out of balance again. I need to readjust my active and passive levels for this new and improved version of myself.

Things like personal appearance, sexuality and internet use still live in passive worlds and I’d like to find better balances for them. Right now with these topics, I sit back, let my brain go to mush and take whatever comes my way. Instead I want to be really intentional on how I approach these things and encounter them in my daily life.

I’m probably not going to discuss my sexuality too much on the web (I’m still a MidWesterner for God’s sake), but this blog offers a great way to focus my web use into something productive and enjoyable (as opposed to mindless and enjoyable). It also encourages me to follow through on the things I talk about. Accountability seems to rise when something is published, even when published on a blog on the internet.