about critical thinking

I had my weekly coaching call with my wellness coach. We talked for about twenty minutes about what I’ve been up to, if I’ve checked out the resources she sent me, if I’ve been managing my stress levels.

I fibbed a little bit. I know there’s no point in lying to your therapist or your coach. But I only kinda sorta looked through those links. I found something I liked, which was a resource on progressive muscle relaxation. I did a few of the exercises for a few seconds, never really stopping to try it in full. I’m far too busy for that! I can’t afford to spend ten minutes stretching and breathing!

Mental health wellness coaching isn’t therapy, nor is it goal-oriented. My coach, whom I’ll call C, has made it very clear that I don’t need to walk away from our calls thinking I have homework to do.

 

The conversation this time moved toward “things I hope for myself before the next, final call.”

I told her I was hoping I would write a bit more, and she asked me what that looked like.

(Writing is lying in bed with PureWriter, throwing myself at a story.)

(It’s not entertainment, really, but it’s not a job or productivity either. It’s just, something that’s me? Something that I do?)

 

And she asked me how I find things to write about.

(It’s all creative impulses, really.)

(When I write these sort of logs every week, talking about my activities and diet and exercise, I get other ideas about things I would like to write about or talk about.)

(It’s kind of the space where I get more of those creative impulses, where I find more of those leads to follow.)

 

What kind of things do I want to write about?

Digital stuff, in a way.

The way the human experience is with things online,

our comments,

our perceptions,

how we see things and respond to them.

Patterns, things we don’t think twice about.

That’s how I am too,

not thinking about everything I experience,

because you can’t think twice about everything you see these days, since you see so much.

But I do want to become the kind of person who thinks twice about things.

 

(It seems like critical thinking is important to you.)

It is.

Those kinds of things are what I like to read, and so I want to write them too.

Critical thinking isn’t something I do all the time,

 

and I don’t think it’s a problem for people to live their lives without it.

Nothing’s wrong with coasting, not having long-term goals, not thinking too deeply about any- and everything.

 

I just grew up gifted.

I loved being smart,

I loved being told I was smart.

My family loved that I was smart,

but staying smart past the fifth grade takes Effort.

 

That’s the kind of person I am—

poisoned by prior greatness.

 

Our expectations of me are one and the same:

“I should do great things.”

 

I don’t want to let myself not strive to be different,

even if I’m totally comfortable sitting back and relaxing,

and taking life on the chin.

 

During my talk with C, I felt motivated to revive my dream of creating a website that hosts the results of my creative sparks: topics that I found interesting, critical thinking about the webs of media that enwrap us.

As she put it, I’d like to zoom out and look at the things we’re all zoomed in on, noses to screens.

 

At the end of every week, or the start of next week, I spend time writing my weekly post according to my formulas.

For a while, I’ve been thinking about doing that for a full year at first. In September or October about, I would reach weekly post 【52】. Then I could use that cultivated space and time to write other things instead: posts about what I see and what I think of what I see.

Maybe I don’t need to wait for 【52】 though. Perhaps I could start sooner than that.

 

 

 

Sycee, here.

I would like to thank you for reading.

But who am I thanking? My posts on dreamwidth generate the lowest of traffic, and my weekly logs are too personal to be interesting to many.

I would like to thank you—a person, the people who do not exist yet still chose to read all my weekly logs.

To you, who against all odds finds purpose in my meaningless data:

Without you, I would have no one to address in the second person.

It’s important to me that I can direct my words to “you,” even if “you” never end up existing.

It helps me reflect on myself.

So I’ll keep on writing, just for you.