Don't Worry, Be Neutral

This is me taking time for myself.

Hey, I didn't say it was QUALITY time.

Or quantity, for that matter.

A few years ago I advised a friend to worry less about other people, to take more time for himself and make himself more of a priority. Little did I know how shallow that advice sounds when you are on the receiving end and thinking what you've been doing was the right thing. Now I'm in a third place of kind of understanding the merit of taking time for myself, but perhaps from a different angle than suggested.

A pet peeve of mine is being told I'm being "too nice" to somebody or about something, as if there is a kind of morally justified state of being an asshole. Or that I need more to do with my time. Seriously, fuck people who say that: just because I don't check in every few minutes to update on my goings on doesn't mean there aren't any. We tend to talk about the things we care about, and I care about my worries for other people. My hobbies, while interesting to me, aren't at the top of my discussion list all the time, and I see nothing wrong with that.

And I see nothing wrong with my attempts at a new method of spending more time with myself without sacrificing my time spent thinking about other people. There is simply less of that empty time spent not thinking at all. My mind may start to suffer from that, maybe it already has, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it or I will readjust my route.

I once knew somebody who didn't believe in self esteem or thinking or caring about one's self. He claimed to have "died to himself" and claimed anything else was vanity. From my perspective, he was obsessed with vanity; one time I just looked at him, and he said, "I know when you do that you're just trying to get me to tell you you're pretty." We watched a makeover show together, and as the stylists were telling a woman to take time for herself, he snorted about how backward their thinking was.

Time for myself has felt good for me, so perhaps I'm a bit self-absorbed. Time spent coloring my hair is very zen; I can turn off most worries while painting my scalp with mud that smells like damp marijuana. What great vanity, to be taking time not to worry while also enhancing my appearance! But the way I see it, the break allows me to readjust and hopefully be a little less likely to be cruel from exhaustion. I mean, I'm sure I treat people much better when I'm freshly showered.

Perhaps I am just too weak and selfish yet to reach this kind of nirvana of constantly being on, constantly being in the best shape I can be in to face life and people and its and their challenges. Maybe as long as I am not perfect, I need this time to be off now and then.

Surely there are worse things than sitting out from fretting for half an hour now and then.