“When you take apart a lego house and mix the pieces into the bin, where does the house go to?”

“It’s in the bin.”

“No, those are just pieces. They could become spaceships or trains. The house was an arrangement. The arrangement doesn’t stay with the pieces and it doesn’t go anywhere else. It’s just gone.”

- xkcd.com

I’m at the cyclical low of self-esteem, brought upon by the discovery of having messed up at work.

When it comes to stupidity and inadequacy, I’m an all-rounder. I’m ignorant, careless, useless, fussy, critical, hypocritical, mean, paranoid, lazy and dorky. I’m so lousy I have to resort to a clumsy string of words that can barely express how lousy I am. I used the same word twice in a sentence, and the argument was possibly circular. Ugh.

Appreciating Convexity

The best thing about working life, it seems, is that it has given me a lot of time of my own. When I put down my work for the night and the weekends, I can explore, discover and pursue my interests. Strangely, it is when I sell my physical hours that I really gain free rein of my thoughts and the liberty to live in my mind. In contrast, schooling was always about filling my head with the thoughts I was supposed to have and knowledge I must remember. It was repressive despite the amount of “free time” I had.

Life has been good. I like my job because it gives me the autonomy to do what I think needs to be done, and choose how to do it, despite my junior position. Outside of work, I’ve been able to catch up on my book-reading, music-listening and movie-watching. I’ve even been able to pick up the piano again. I can take a walk outside whenever I felt like doing so, without feeling guilty about taking time away from some readings I’m not even remotely interested in.

Now, I have the liberty to reflect, to day dream and to read up on any nonsense that happen to pique my interest. Absolute time has less meaning. If I need to take a long time to finish a difficult book, so be it – I don’t need to find something straightforward to read just to feel the gratification of having completed a book. I watched Gone With The Wind in one continuous sitting. I’ve even survived the 7.5 hour extreme art house film Satantango. I  can listen to Eric Clapton’s extended 9 mins Wonderful Tonight 10 times a night, or to the full Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 twice in a row. On Saturday, I can practise the piano for 7 hours. On Sunday, I can spend an afternoon wandering around.

Instead of being told and assessed constantly about things I should/need to understand, I am learning to appreciate what I cannot yet understand. At work, I explain away convexity. After work, I embark on a search for non-linearity in life. That’s when I can fully enjoy the second, third, or even fourth order effects of spending my time.

A lot of my time is sold to my full-time work, but in my head I’m living more vivaciously than ever before.