Idle Time

At church yesterday the sermon was about self improvement. Kind of a Christian New Year's Resolution theme. At one point the pastor said something that struck me, because it was something I'd been thinking about. She said that in order to make a positive change you have to figure out what's in the way of that change and why you've been holding on to it. That is a pretty extreme paraphrase on my part, and the sentence is a grammatical abomination, but it helped me get some perspective on something that has been bothering me. 

In the past two years I have become an expert at wasting time. It might be the only thing I am still good at.J and I are addicted to the internet and TV shows. It never used to be like this, but now they seem to steal our time until we don't have time to do the things we once enjoyed. When I think about the root of the problem the answer is so obvious.

Our reality was unbearable. The problem of feeling immoral for his/ our involvement in the military in and of itself may not have been unbearable but feeling that way in a town that was so loyal to the military was awful. (I have heard that few military bases are surrounded by town with such blind support for the military which made our situation that much more frustrating.) It was pretty hard to hide that we weren't from the area and as soon as people pinned you for not being local they assumed the military had something to do with it. What was worse was that almost everyone had some kind of military passed that they were obnoxiously proud of and assumed we were too. The thing that we lost sleep over hating was rubbed in our faces everyday.

At that point in our lives I don't blame us for becoming addicted to something, anything that would keep our minds occupied. The problem is I believe I have forgotten how to live in the present. I have a much better reality now but I am still wasting all my time keeping my thoughts at arms length. One of the over riding theme for my life right now is to learn how to exist with my thoughts again and how to break my idle time habit.