#117 | No time for accidents
Beware the barrenness of a busy life. — Socrates
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. — Sylvia Plath
I turned 29 this week. I'm getting slightly older and, I hope, a little lighter. To celebrate, at sunrise, I worked through a much-recommended pdf, YearCompass, which I've linked below.
The process begins with reviewing my year week-by-week. So I flicked through my calendar, from January to January; a year, a short trip around the sun.
This last year was my best. Still, as I reflected, like a kick in the face, I was smacked by grief. Grief from being too busy. The heartache of bouncing between a hundred things and having all but a couple of them slipping past me. Fear that life will lapse, and I'll be too occupied to look up and breathe.
As February turned to March and on to April, I was astonished by the hours I lost on sales calls, and the further hours evaporated when working on things that never materialised. Holidays zip past, and so do long weekends by the sea, but as August became September, I was appalled by Time's fleeting nature. Time, that son-of-a-bitch, is leaving me with only memories. Fifty-two weeks: I'll get to do that eighty-five times.
During school, and ever since, I've ram-packed my diary. At school, I was Mr Extra-Curricular. And my mild-mannered good-boy busyness eventually led to my head being flushed by the older boys (this was, in fact, never diarised).
But I didn't care. Why? Being busy rewarded me in the game I was very obviously playing: The contest to become a perfect Prefect. The prize? I'd wear a blue blazer when the others wore tweed and a white shirt when others wore pastel. It was the most facile and meaningless competition. Can you believe these are the lessons taught to kids?
It's tragic but true that, at the time, I was thrilled by my appointment. I had won the game of that microscopic Life I was living. And I won because I kept myself frantically busy. Years later, I worked in a consultancy (which I later quit) and found myself playing the same game. Rather than being thoughtful or intentional, busyness was the key to my success.
But busyness is hollow. Worse still, it hollows out your life.
I am writing from the perspective of a founder, where an empty diary is, I have always presumed, the absolute worst signal possible to give off. Isn't free time indicative of stagnation? It's the opposite. When 90% of my work last year did not lead anywhere, the lesson must only be to spend my days differently.
The final tragedy of being busy is that there is no space for accidents, no empty afternoons for chance and beautiful encounters. When our world is time-blocked, we put a straight-jacket on our potential. We block ourselves from sensing those thin threads of possibility that lead us in the wildest directions.
Here's the link to the pdf. Recommended!
My week in books
Hitler: A Study In Tyranny by Alan Bullock. This was a dark read. I learned about Hitler’s regime at school but haven’t touched it since. The cruelty was unspeakable, its scale vast, and his complete power over the German people and rapidly over Europe was terrifying. This is recent history, and we must not forget how quickly a man like this can seize control.
Live well,
Hector