Operation Achieve Anything: Day Three-Hundred-Twenty-Four, Dateline 11-20-2018
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“We live in a very tense society. We are pulled apart... and we all need to learn how to pull ourselves together... I think that at least part of the answer lies in solitude.”
Good afternoon crickets. Welcome to day number three-hundred-twenty-four of Operation Achieve Anything. Today is the day that I implement my plan to watch and review as many episodes as I can over the next two days to be able to afford somewhat of a vacation. With Thanksgiving coming up, I don’t want to have to worry about any deadlines on the day because I plan to be wasted. I also a few extra days off to recover and recharge my energy toward the challenge because I’ve been feeling a bit burnt out on the challenge over the past week, so a little downtime might be just what I need.
Sure, I’ll still have to do my Daily Breaker post, and actually publish each review with a little behind-the-scenes work to do, but I should be able to accomplish all of these tasks in a little over an hour. This will free up the rest of the day for me to be able to just relax. The great thing is, my family will be so busy with holiday fun, I’ll be left all alone to enjoy the peace and quiet. Not that anyone really pesters me that much, but there are daily routines of interaction that I could also use a break from as well.
Seventeen years ago, I started a Thanksgiving tradition that I’ll dig deeper into on the day, but I turned to holiday into a celebration of solitude while I was living away from my family in Seattle where all of my roommates and friends would be busy at home to celebrate the holiday. I would get offers to tag along, but I didn’t want to be a burden or have to deal with the awkwardness of having to deal with other’s family conflicts or having to constantly explain why I’m there. I’d rather have fun on my own than be bummed out by everyone sympathetic comments while I wasn’t all that concerned because I always visited my family for Christmas, which is enough of an event for me.
I really look forward to Thanksgiving day because it’s the one day that I have everyone trained to leave me completely alone. I mention this because yesterday’s assignment was another one that focused on solitude. I wouldn’t say that I always preferred my alone time the way that I do now, but I always did need to take breaks from being social, either to recharge my fake extroverted energy or give everyone a break from me. Being that I am all or nothing when it comes to relationships, I know I could/can be a bit intense with my need to always have fun while with others because I’d rather be bored all alone. So I always felt when I’d isolate myself that I was doing it for others as much as myself.
Now, as I grow more and more comfortable in my own skin, I would say that I prefer to be by myself, at least during this period where I’m still trying to work out who I actually am. It used to be easier to be around others when my character may have been erratic, but at the same time, my role was also well defined. I was the comic relief which made it simple to try to turn anything into a joke, no matter how random and obscure my references might have been. I no longer have any default reactions which makes me uncomfortable in crowded rooms since I no longer know where I fit in anywhere.
Hopefully, someday soon, with the help of even more solitude, I’ll figure out what I want to keep and what I want to get rid of in order to develop a well defined new me and get back to interacting with the outside world. Like with my weight loss efforts, it will probably take more time to take off the negative layers that it took to put them all on. I’m learning to be patient in both cases because I do deserve a better life than what I’ve been allowing myself to live and I’m learning to be okay with the time that it will take me to get there.
This assignment also touched on how solitude is a way to feel closer to God in the silence from the outside world. The book did the usual, “this doesn’t have to be a god from religions, but some sort of external power,” but I don’t know why we always have to look outside to make peace with some external creator instead of learning to appreciate the creator within. Why bother even trying to relate to something so grand if there is something out there. Whether or not something powerful created the physical world, it’s our internal self’s interpretation of the world that’s more important, so I see the solitude is a way to make peace with the creator within since that’s the only way to find any order in the external world.
At least that’s how I see it. With that, I’m going to consider yesterday’s task to be done, and introduce that assignment for today where again, I’m supposed to try and find even more time to be with myself. This time, there isn’t even a secondary task, like yesterday’s nonsense about god. Oh well, I guess we’ll both have to wait for tomorrow to see what I come up with for an update. Until then, it’s now time for me to sign off by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
