I think I'm a hypocrite

Let me paint a picture for you:

It's somewhere around 9:45PM...

My bedroom lights are turned off...

Candle light flickers across the walls...

And we're in bed.

It's a little hot in here, but I'm exactly where I want to be:

Curled up with my dog, Wallace, reading a book.

It's title?

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard.

And there's a passage I wanted to share with you.

It's right around the point in the book where Annie...

(Can I call her "Annie?" Is that allowed? I mean, we're not on a first-name basis, but referring to her as "Dillard" makes me feel like a sports reporter at a newspaper in the 80s... which I am not)

... anyway, it's at a point in the book where Annie is talking about how having a schedule is beneficial for a writer.

She says:

"There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur's life a good one, or Thomas Mann's?"

Lately, life has been good.

The weather is warming up...

I've received my second covid vaccine...

I've been riding my motorcycle a lot...

And -- I've been dating.

And it's in the "dating" aspect of life where I feel like this "life of sensation" quote hits the hardest.

For as long as I can remember, I have been addicted to approval.

I still am.

And the approval of a woman is akin to heroin for me.

So, while dating has been going well, on some level, it's also like taking regular doses of a hard drug...

One I can never get enough of.

Because the reality is -- no amount of approval, no amount of compliments, no amount of outside validation will ever be enough.

Like my girl Annie says:

"it requires more and more."

So I'm not going to become a monk or anything. After 2020, I'm glad to be out in the world again.

But this quote is something I'd like to keep in-mind.

And I'd encourage you to keep it in-mind too.

Because I think we're all living a "life of sensation" in some way -- whether it's constantly pulling up Instagram for our next dopamine hit, reaching for a bag of junk food when we know damn well we're not hungry anymore, or silently pleading with the pretty stranger across the room to come a little closer.

I don't think these things are inherently bad.

Instagram can be a great way to keep up with old friends...

I looove junk food...

And pretty strangers are the best type of strangers.

But if you're prone to addiction...

Neediness...

Or the unending desire to fill some sort of hole in your spirit...

Like someone I know (*cough* it's me)...

Then it's worth keeping an eye on these things.

Maybe it's best to make "the life of the spirit" our foundation...

With indulgences in "the life of sensation" every now and then.

But -- I'm also going to finish writing this and immediately text a girl to make plans with her...

So I think I'm just a hypocrite.