Don't stop being you

January 29, 2009 / Filed under: Life, Reflection, Music, Blogging

A lot of times I get so busy with work and life, I forget to do the little things that make me happy, such as blogging and listening to music. It's easy to push these things aside when pressures in life and at work eat away at your time and inspiration.

When I go through these droughts, I notice I'm less inspired, less influenced, and less happy.

Blogging

There's something therapeutic about making a blog post. It's like you've solidified your thoughts and preserved them for all of time. You can finally clear your head from that thought and move onto other ones. You've released it to the world. When I go a long while without a blog post, or some form of internal reflection on a certain topic, I start to feel my head is less clear and focused. Because... the ideas keep coming, but since I don't release them, they remain floating around in my head - running into other ideas and causing a traffic-jam of thoughts.

And Twitter doesn't count as blogging, in my opinion. Twitter is just water cooler chatter. It requires no internal reflection, therefore is less therapeutic.

So, even if I can't seem to escape the pressures from life and work, I still force myself to take some time (even during work hours!) to blog. You just have to force yourself to stop doing whatever you're doing. Sure, the deadlines are coming, and there's pressure from all sides. But continuing to try to juggle all that pressure does no good. It simply won't stop coming, so there's no point in thinking you can get ahead by staying focused on the pressure.

Sure, it could be considered as wasting company time, but in the long run, it will pay off for the company if you are more clear-headed and able to handle additional pressure. If blogging helps you do that, then I don't see any problem in taking a brief detour from the workload, even if it puts you behind temporarily.

Music

Music is also therapeutic. It takes me out of my current state-of-mind, and let's my thoughts flow freely. This can be a double-edged sword while at work - IE: you become so relaxed, you can't focus on work.

I find that a nice balance of music during the workday can help relieve work pressures and stress. I often listen to music in the early afternoon, right after lunch, as a way to ease back into the workload.