THINGS I will do

It is good, perhaps even essential, although a dependancy on it could prove extremely problematic, to know that you can drop down and leave the life that you have made for yourself. During daily interaction with habits it is difficult to apprehend how much I am dependent on these habits, what function they serve, and whether they make me happy or not. To be a little less vague, before I moved to Panama I was drinking too much, stressing about money constantly, and driving my car as much. I sold my car so that I could move to Panama, I don't have any friends around to go out to bars with, and as a consequence of that, and as a determined decision, I just don't really worry about money that much. I don't look at the stack of bills growing smaller because I know that some day it will be gone, and I already know what I will do then so it's no use rehearsing it again.

Strip these things away and I am able to look at myself again. The things that I care about, my values resurface because they aren't hidden in daily tedium. For a long time I held certain values and wanted to live a certain way but didn't. I'm tempted to say couldn't, but that isn't true. In reality, I had stopped seeing those values, didn't realize that I was contradicting them with my lifestyle, and when I did notice that glaring omission, felt like my life was too rigid to allow for the alterations that would bring these values into action. Thinking about it like this makes me feel like a character in a novel. I never used to understand them when they so clearly wanted to do something, or there was some obvious decision that they knew they needed to make, but resisted, instead did the opposite and suffered under their own intention. This makes so much sense now. People must do it every day. It is so difficult to have control over your own life. Observation is key. And then taking the time to alter things when necessary, but only when necessary to evict from your life what is contrary to yourself, and bring into line your decisions, your actions and daily existence into what is good and what you want.

The accumulation of stuff has always been for me a kind of mirror of this stifling habit forming behavior. When I live in a house I slowly start to amass stuff, and without realizing that it is boxing me in, filling up the space in my house I keep bringing in more. It never occurs to me that I can throw it all out until I am moving and I decide that I'd rather trash half of my stuff than move with it to another apartment. One of my plans is to live with less stuff so that I can have a clearer eye over my belongings, and through extension the decisions of my life. I'm not saying that it is bad to have anything, or that interesting artifacts should be discarded, but, just like the formation of habits, they should be taken with care. When bringing a new object into the home, just like forming a new routine, care should be taken as to how it will affect the other objects or habits in my life. This includes space, whether it will fill up my house and my life more than I would like, and a careful weighing of the object to see if I really do need it, or if I am just accepting it because I don't know what else to do with it. It will help to strip down to the bare essentials, because then comparison can be made--if it seems silly in comparison to these utter necessities, or these things that stand in direct relation to my personal ethics, it will be easy to get rid of.

I will do these things when I return to Texas

Set aside more time for reading

Set aside less time for drinking

Drive less

Bike more

Write more

Charity

Take more trips by myself

Look for other ways to travel besides on airplanes

Find some way to speak more spanish

Go to mexican bars

Hang out with Bandy and Luna

Live with less stuff

And the corollary of this last one is that I will create less waste

I can't say that I won't worry about money, but I'm working out a system that will do the major part of the worrying for me.