I'm tired today. A week or so of insomnia (possibly caused by heat, possibly not -- though it sure ain't helping), with the great irony that I'm in the middle of a month without caffeine. But: I'm tired.
There's a phrase I think about quite a lot. 'Who are you when you're not doing?' I think I came across it on the Hurry Slowly podcast, though I haven't listened to that for a fair few years now. The question is meant to interrogate: when you get past the activities, work, hobbies, actions that define your day-to-day... who is the person under that?
I actually don't find it that useful a question (which doesn't keep me from coming back to it). It's an interesting question, though, in that it reaches for something that runs against focus on doing and productivity and action, and encourages contemplation of what makes us up beyond that. For me, though, I'm often struggling with the opposite -- trying to pull myself out of abstract (and often unhelpful, circular) thought and into action or immersion in something. The thoughts without action can go round and round and are really just a circular trap.
On days like this, where my brain is just fundamentally broken from tiredness, I feel like I'm trying to remember myself. We are all made up of the stories that we tell ourselves (which is one of the reasons being around other people can be so important -- they actualise or challenge those stories for us). When my brain gets like this (and I find it VERY unpleasant), I feel like I have a better sense of 'who I am when I'm not doing'. I'm the bit of myself that's responsible for remembering all the other bits.
This is mostly a passive process normally, though I do find I lose some sense of solidity when I spend too long not around people (known to me or strangers -- they do different things in this regard). Though I also know that I can only do so much of that in a given period.
In states like this, though I feel I have to work at it -- to hold all of those pieces in my head at once, actively. Which is about as much fun as it sounds.
This isn't meant to be a maudlin post -- I think it fits within the general bailiwick of this blog, and the alternative was no post at all because, well, see above.
I really would like some sleep, though.
