The Book of Weston

Imagine every day a list:

tasks, ever-expanding. Wake up

and the world has become

    list.

Imagine your brain never left school.

It mastered school and thought:

   why not make life school?

Brilliant! Let's keep this grift going.

So you are the teacher and the student.

You assign and then grade yourself

    harshly.

Imagine finishing work and thinking:

    Ah, now for the home work.

Imagine daily evaluations,

a.k.a. dark journaling:

    How much progress have we made?

        Look at your peers. They're so much further

        than you. How old are you again?

        We expect better from you.

Imagine taking this voice seriously,

this silly little arbitrary voice in the head.

Imagine every desire notated

in a list 1,900 tasks long

        and growing...

Imagine rest as homework.

Today's assignment: rest

for 30 minutes. As in,

        do nothing really well.

Imagine failing this assignment

over and over. 15 minutes in and you realize

        5 other assignments are due.

That's 50% completion,

        an F.

Imagine judging yourself for

        failing rest.

Imagine that judgment spilling

like dark ink, blotting out your free time.

Your grades are

        slipping. Your performances

are becoming stiffer. The audience

        stirs

restlessly. They didn't pay to see

        this.

        What did they pay? Who's watching?

Maybe you need to socialize

        more. That's it!

You've neglected your social studies.

So you start tracking your social time.

As in: ah, shit, this week was down 3 hours.

I wasted Sunday resting (not real rest,

just a guilty marathon of mini-chores.)

        These relationships aren't progressing

        in the exact manner, at the exact pace

        that my brain has decided they should.

        FAIL.

Maybe you need a vacation. Naturally,

        you make a list

built from other people's lists:

places you should go, things you

        should do there. Selfies to take,

experiences to obtain.

But you never go because

        what if you didn't plan it right?

What if you miss something and ruin

        a once-in-a-lifetime trip?

Imagine every day

        darker than the last.

You're failing sleep,

the pre-requisite for everything!

Gotta start tracking that. Maybe

there's some method…

        breath work, meditation, yoga, exercise -

imagine losing sleep

        thinking about

                improving sleep. The days

accelerate. A week

        passes and habits are

                slipping, habits

                        that used to be fun.

What? Who said that? What's that word

        ...fun?

Oh, god, I haven't been tracking that...

I'm definitely

        failing fun.

Imagine assigning yourself:

do something fun today

        and then failing that.

At this point, you know

    you're failing out. At this point

            your brain

                    stops.

It refuses to continue.

You lay on your bed and

something strange happens.

The longer you lie there,

the more beautiful the ceiling becomes.

You feel everything moving out:

all your plans, lists,

strategies, goals, all

effortlessly

seeping out of you like a poison

you forgot you had ingested.

And in their place -

gorgeous in its lack of effort -

the world comes flooding in.