proust challenge: day two
Question Two:
What is your favorite way to spend your time?
Ugh. Okay fine. Many easy answers come to mind. Have a list:
Traveling and exploring new places
Eating. Enjoying a memorable dining experience. (Should I start a comedic restaurant review? But actually lmk in the comments.)
Drinking. Ya’ll know I love my brewery crawls and a well-crafted cocktail but also being drunk in general has yet to lose its novelty and I imagine I’ll write about my relationship to alcohol a lot in the coming days. Moving on.
Being in nature - especially alone. The beach, as discussed in day one, but also TREES. Fucking treeeeees, man.
Reading. The goal is 36 new books this year. Thanks, COVID.
Spending time with loved ones. Having interesting conversations. Laughing.
Exercise. Working at Flywheel (RIP) changed my relationship to my body in miraculous ways!
Writing, sometimes.
SLEEPING. I’ve tried to write about sleep so many times. It’ll happen soon.
Oh and, acting. That too.
For whatever reason, the fact that these are all very common answers bothers me despite the fact that there is good reason why all of these are very common answers. So I’m inclined to ask myself: why exactly? What is is for me about these activities that spARks jOy?
I see two overarching themes. One: periods of heightened sensation, and two: the experience of newness. In other words, it appears what I want is to live. I can’t believe I recently considered taking a fully-remote, 9-5 job answering emails. Fuck a salary. I would’ve died.
I think most people crave intense sensation on some level. You may even seem to yourself like a Lester Nygaard until you’re in the basement bludgeoning your wife with a hammer. (Good reference, Mag). Some people seek out the euphoria of intensity through skydiving. I get it through drinking too much and eating more than my digestive system would like. I try to amp up my feelings by exposing myself to things outside my comfort zone in the realms of travel and meaningful conversation. To me and generally to others, the desire to feel is clear.
On the other hand, the “newness” aspect of much of this list is not necessarily apparent. After all, these are things I do as often as I can because I know they’ll bring me joy. Eating a slice of my favorite pizza or a warm chocolate chip cookie. Drinking a solid Sour IPA. Running into the ocean after napping on the sand. Getting a good sweat in on my bike. Swigging Bourbon from the bottle around a campfire, telling the same old stories with my best friends.
It’s objectively the same experience over and over again. And of course it isn’t. There’s a huge difference between a homemade chocolate cookie hot out of the oven and one from Shoprite that’s been microwaved for 10 seconds. You know what I mean?
And somehow, perhaps not so serendipitously… I end up at the end of the list. My love of acting. Something that took root inside me before I even knew it could be a career for crazy people. Acting is… these two themes, married. It is experiencing a heightened emotion… over and over again… as if you were experiencing it for the first time... anew. It appears all I want is to live. My life - and others - forever. And ever. And ever.
I suddenly feel much better about myself. As esoteric as I worry I can be, sometimes I just make a lot of sense. What a comfort.