The first day of 2019. I probably put around ten hours of work today. I was deeply focused, though in the last two hours my performance has diminished, so I decided to call it a day after finishing a feature. I used to think I no longer had gas in the tank to pull off something like this, but I had forgotten that when you get swallowed by a creative project the activity itself is renewing. There’s no possibility of burn-out because work is not stress inducing, but the body takes a beating from sitting long hours and sub-par nutrition.
I went out to take the sun with my book, but I found myself unable to put my mind away from work, so instead of reading I brought out the computer and worked a while in the sun. The sun was pleasant, but I needed better lighting conditions to truly focus. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll set aside some chores that don’t require that much attention so that I can do them under sunlight.
The material world and the inner world have become distant, it’s a familiar state of being, but in former times I used to identify with it. I thought I didn’t enjoy nature much, and I used to think there was nothing more to the self than thoughts. In this state this is indeed true, but it is simply a state that will pass when my conditions change. It’s necessary and welcome at this time. The concept of leisure repels me in this state, I noticed just now.
Yesterday I wrote that I would do the stoic exercise of reviewing the day, but the day is a blur of work. At various times I felt myself sidetracking, but when I came back to do what I had proposed myself, I discovered my intuitions were pointing in the right direction, before doing this I had to do that. So, instead of doing feature driven development I’ll do intuition driven development. I take note that this methodology only works when I’m in the proper state.