For one thing, it is really cold out. The low today is 29! Pretty cold, son!
I walk outside to coffee shops (both for work and leisure) and I just feel cold. I bundle up. I walk and walk. The other night I was walking and I felt a stiffness in my legs. I said to myself 'Wow your legs would love to just not be moving through cold air. They would love to be warm and still right now'. And then I kept walking. Right into a bush. It was late. I had been out on the town.
And this leads me to the point of this post: I feel busy, frantic, and like I'm occupied all the time. I'm burning the candle at both ends. I am just burning the candle. This isn't some weird double wick candle where you have two ends that simultaneously towards the center. One wick is my professional life, the other end is my personal life. Because my life is more than dual. My candle would have too many wicks to count. So I've just got a blow torch and I'm just burning the candle from straight away. This has become a nice metaphor for me. Even if it is silly and you don't like the way it sounds. I just like how it makes me feel about my life right now. Yeah, I'm busy. So what? I'm doing all kinds of shit that I want to. Seeing all kinds of people.
Reading all kinds of things. In fact, I've just purchased three books on the internet that I'm quite excited about. One is Collingwood's An Essay On Philosophical Method. Another is by a philosopher named Evan Thompson. It is called Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Sounds very much up my alley. I'm more and more curious about phenomenology. It is a discipline I need to grapple with directly. I think that it will have large implicatons for my work on both Collingwood and Foucault, and for my work on the philosophy of history more generally. Thus, the third book I've ordered is a copy of Derrida's Edmund Husserl's "Origin of Geometry": An Introduction. An essay by Derrida on Husserl that includes the full text of 'The Origin of Geometry'. I think that Husserl's work will really help me parse Collingwood's notion of reenactment and its relationship to phenomenology.
So, one part of the candle is the intellectual part. And I've burning that one pretty well lately. A fair amount, but not a ton, of reading. Some writing, but also not a ton. Just doing what I can. Moving my way through my analysis of Collingwood's final books. Which is taking me longer than I thought it would. There is a lot to reckon with though.
I'm also trying to manage relationships. Trying to pay attention to friends I have while trying to find time for new ones. Because man there just isn't that much time in the days. You go to work and then you have five or six hours at night to see someone or go somewhere and then you gotta go back to work the next day. And despite what Real Estate says, the night is not just another day. It is darker, colder, and sleepier than any day I know. It isn't easy to just keep going going going. Party party party. Socialize socialize socialize. Keep going!
I'm settling in to winter. I'm trying to keep warm. I'm watching the sunset at 4:10 pm. I'm coping with darkness. What to keep doing? Ya know? Just keep on living. For me, keep on reading and writing, keep on going out with friends, keep on going to work, keep on trying to explore, even if I'm not always doing as much as I can. I'm tired, you know? I work a lot. It is cold.
But the goal is to burn the candle. To keep going hard. Keep living hard.
I saw the other day a quotation from Francis Bacon. Something about how a wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. How am I to make opportunities? I don't think I do it quite enough. Still interesting to reflect on.
Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty content these days. I'm working hard and succeeding at work. I'm working hard on my own reading and writing and slowly making progress on that.
I'm more curious than ever.
I will continue to try and live hard despite the cold.
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