Yesterday there was a moment when I found myself feeling heavy at the realisation of how much my behaviour around planning & commitments has changed over the years.
As a teenager I remember life being dense. Various after-school classes. Homework every day. Out-of-school activities and yet, there was time for friends, for laughter, for staying out late. All with great level of satisfaction and sense of being alive.
Today life has slowed down, settled into familiar rhythm: work, studies, home, and any other activity feels like a stretch a bit too far. Especially at the start of doing it.
Someone might say it’s the age… but the Welcome Week gave me an unexpected realisation around this matter.
I had marked several online sessions in my diary. All chosen with genuine interest, and yet, when the time came, I joined only a few. Not because I was unable to attend, but because I forgot, drifted into something else, or quietly dismissed the commitment altogether.
To not feel entirely bad about such a great start, I’ve attended the session on volunteering at the end of the week. And I'm really glad I did.
Here are the thoughts I caught myself thinking afterwards:
My first instinct is almost always - expansion.
✓ To say yes.
✓ To help.
✓ To enrol.
✓ To commit - often to several things at once.
Perhaps there is a subtle confidence hidden in this impulse, but also, what I’ve realised, a quiet blindness.
I began to see how consistently I underestimate the time and inner space required to carry things through with care. In return when attention is stretched too thin, nothing is truly met. Effort multiplies, yet results feel diluted everywhere. And as a result capacity for anything outside the routine shrinks as well...
Feels like at some point in life "being busy" replaced "being engaged".
Sitting uncomfortably with this one at the moment.
Not because it reveals a lack of ability to direct my life, but because it questions, I suppose you could say, an identity I built around capacity, productivity, and quiet self-demand over the years. Perhaps life balance & engagement is not something to be optimised.
Also starting to think that maybe, balance and engagement are not things to be optimised.
Just maybe they begin with recognising the difference between what is fittable and what is truly livable.
And that feels like a meaningful place to start, even without attending the other planned webinars.
