thedarkproject (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thedarkproject) wrote2008-06-04 08:38 am
thedarkproject) wrote2008-06-04 08:38 am
reflections on a repetitive existence
Today I did something I've meant to do for weeks; get out of bed when I woke up, instead of pressing the 'snooze' button on my alarm clock 3 or 4 times. (In fact, my alarm is probably going off back at home now. Oops.) For some time I've felt strangely alert when I first wake, and then amazingly sluggish after the extra 20 to 30 minutes of half-sleep. It would be great to get up and go to work when my body tells me to rather than when the clock tells me to, and flexi-time at work allows me to do that, as long as I can train myself to always wake within that 2 hour window.
One thing already depressed me today though, and it's not even 9am yet. It's when you find yourself passing someone on the street when going to or from work, and then half a day later, you pass them again in the opposite direction. Often I wonder where the time goes - how is it June already? - and one answer to that is that it's been tied up in these half-days between seeing a person go one way and seeing them come back the other.
The person I passed is someone I recognise, though not someone I know. When I saw her last night, I remember what someone said about her, which was not entirely positive. It occurs to me that as the number of people you know grows, the chance of you having had someone warn you about each of those people approaches 100%. At the beginning, you are naïve and ripe for exploitation. At the end, you are cynical and wary of everybody. Is there a good middle ground? Some would argue that it's best to find things out for yourself, but ignoring all the advice of others is squandering a vast pool of intelligence and experience. It would be good if people told you about the positive traits of others alongside the negative, but we're either not so skilled at spotting those and summing them up, or not as motivated to share them. I wonder why.
One thing already depressed me today though, and it's not even 9am yet. It's when you find yourself passing someone on the street when going to or from work, and then half a day later, you pass them again in the opposite direction. Often I wonder where the time goes - how is it June already? - and one answer to that is that it's been tied up in these half-days between seeing a person go one way and seeing them come back the other.
The person I passed is someone I recognise, though not someone I know. When I saw her last night, I remember what someone said about her, which was not entirely positive. It occurs to me that as the number of people you know grows, the chance of you having had someone warn you about each of those people approaches 100%. At the beginning, you are naïve and ripe for exploitation. At the end, you are cynical and wary of everybody. Is there a good middle ground? Some would argue that it's best to find things out for yourself, but ignoring all the advice of others is squandering a vast pool of intelligence and experience. It would be good if people told you about the positive traits of others alongside the negative, but we're either not so skilled at spotting those and summing them up, or not as motivated to share them. I wonder why.