Life and Living

Childhood Me

I made this reflection on what I do when I’m not working deeply. In my childhood, the main thing I did when I went home was play games or scroll through social media. Talking to friends was a major part of gaming, though. Nowadays, I don’t really play games with that fervor anymore as I have found myself valuing interacting with the environment around me more. The previous behavior was definitely fueled by an co-opted escapism.

Living

Suppose work is the means to an end (still can serve a larger goal), then I see living life as an end in itself (still can be goal-oriented). For me, work is a matter of duty to society and humanity, whereas living simply exists for my values. And reflecting on my values made me think back to an experience I had for a side-project w/ a CS Professor who was really into value-based living. There was some wisdom in that, and I still have my notes from the retreat, but the main thing I took away was to realize my 3 key values were learning, growth, and openness. 1

So how does that lead me to organize my daily activities towards those values?

Things I Do Day-to-Day

  1. Read Books: Finding resources and reading up on interesting topics that come up
  2. Notes/Blogs: These act as sort of a scoreboard for learning and growth
  3. Games: Chat with the friends over Minecraft
  4. Movies: Cinema, cinema is just great, I love it
  5. Exercise: Physical upkeep and helps grant some dopamine as well
  6. Reflection: Take 5-10 minutes lying down and hashing out my thoughts on the day
  7. Social Media: I limited it to an hour, helps keep me in the loop

Sometimes though, it is about just getting to the next day. BUT be intentional when you can.


  1. Looking at this, I realize there is an aspect of life in job as well. I could not be a bureaucrat. ↩