I’ve had a bad cold this week, and a Korean 감기 likely caught in a elementary school is a fairly vicious affair; it really knocks the energy out of you. Having an excuse not to do anything useful outside of school hours, I’ve been in very high spirits once each dose of “종합감기약” (lit. general cold medicine) kicks in. With nothing I feel I have to do, there’s no procrastination and so my primary source of unhappiness is disengaged.

I have made great strides in my year in Korea with regards to self-confidence and perspective on the future. I still believe though that procrastination is something that must be beaten through a combination of sheer willpower and also improving one’s lifestyle in order to make that willpower flow more readily. Haruki Murakami:

I am convinced that artists who lead an unhealthy life burn out more quickly. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin were the heroes of my youth – all of them died young, even though they didn’t deserve to. Only geniuses like Mozart or Pushkin deserve an early death. Jimi Hendrix was good, but not so smart because he took drugs. Working artistically is unhealthy; an artist should lead a healthy life to make up for it. Finding a story is a dangerous thing for an author; running helps me to avert that danger. (source)

Ignore the rising bile at the pretension of my quoting something like this. It’s simply the perspective of someone smart worth keeping in mind.

Limiting entertainment may well be a way in which one can live more healthily. Increasingly, I think that sitting and doing nothing might well be a better choice than browing the Internet, watching TV, listening to music. We are told to keep busy in order to avoid feeling bad, when there’s some particular reason for feeling bad on the horizon, such as breaking up with a romantic partner. I am not sure how one can judge when this is healthy avoidance of brooding, and when it is making oneself busy when there is nothing worth being busy about in order to avoid facing up the reality of one’s life and the human condition. I intend to spend more time sitting and doing nothing to investigate this further.