lingering

end-of-year reflections on how i spend my time

Walasse Ting, Goya’s Lover, 1977

I used to live in the future a lot. Everything I did in the present had to serve a future purpose. I worked hard at my job because I wanted a promotion. I got up early to write because I wanted to get my novel out into the world. Of course, I enjoyed writing. I enjoyed the process of making up characters and putting them in uncomfortable situations. But the reason I stuck to a schedule and worked as hard as I did was because I really wanted to get published. This was at a point in my life when I was terribly bored at work. My job wasn’t very fulfilling. So I looked to writing as a kind of salvation whereby I could escape my nine-to-five and get paid for doing this thing I loved so much. 

In the past, I would sometimes get restless spending a lazy afternoon hanging out with friends or reading on the couch. I felt the constant pressure to be productive, that is, to do something that would bear fruit, that would produce some tangible result down the road. Essentially, I was valuing the future much more than the present.

When I think back to some of the wonderful things that happened this year, they were not the result of careful planning but of inspiration and serendipity: trying figure drawing, taking an improv class, starting a Substack, hosting salons on self-compassion, adopting a cat (yes, that just happened!). In 2023, I want to make room for more inspiration, more serendipity, more surprise.

When it comes to dating, there’s an approach that’s future-oriented, and there’s an approach that’s more about living in the moment. 

1. Future mode: The pressure to move on after a breakup, to get to that next milestone in life—whatever it is—moving in together, getting married, buying a house, having kids. To keep trying with someone who looks good on paper because you might fall in love with them someday.

2. Present mode: Enjoying each moment instead of forcing things to happen on a timeline. Stop spending time with someone if you’re not into them right now. Let yourself take as much time as you need to heal after a breakup rather than trying to find the next person by a deadline. 

I think you need a bit of both mentalities. It’s important, for example, to date someone you can see a future with if your goal is to be in a long-term relationship. But you should also spend time with someone you really like instead of hoping you’ll fall for them later. Because think about all the things you could be doing instead: focusing on yourself, your personal projects, your friendships, hobbies, all the things that give you joy and expand your capacity for love. 

One of the best things I read this year was Byung-Chul Han’s The Scent of Time. Han argues that we’ve lost touch with the contemplative life that was much valued in the past (vita contemplativa) in favor of a busy, active, modern life (vita activa). The pressure to be constantly doing something is warping our perception of time, causing us to lead effectively shorter lives. We’ve lost the ability to linger.

Whoever tries to live faster, will ultimately also die faster. It is not the total number of events, but the experience of duration which makes life more fulfilling. Where one event follows close on the heels of another, nothing enduring comes about. Fulfilment and meaning cannot be explained on quantitative grounds. A life that is lived quickly, without anything lasting long and without anything slow, a life that is characterized by quick, short-term and short-lived experiences is itself a short life, no matter how high the ‘rate of experience’ may be.

Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time

I think about this at the end of the year because it’s a time when people pack their social calendars. You want to see friends before they head off for the holidays, you want to catch up with people you haven’t seen in a while, and of course, there’s family. It’s also a time when people like to plan ahead and set goals for the new year. It’s good to be ambitious, but it’s equally important to give yourself permission to do absolutely nothing.

In 2023, I want to slow—down—time. I want to linger in the moment instead of constantly planning what’s next or thinking about the future or filling my calendar with activities. This also means giving myself permission to rewatch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy if I feel like it. My old self would’ve balked at such mindless indulgence. It would’ve felt like a waste of time because I could be revising my novel instead or sending out ten query letters or learning python (hypothetically) or watching something new and edifying. But we need productive time, and we need down time, which by definition, should be unproductive. Good things come out of fallow time. New ideas are sown.

With that said, I won’t be writing a post next week. As always, thanks for reading and sharing my work. Happy holidays and see you in 2023!