This post is sort of a ramble. It’s neither a rant nor a lecture: just talking about me and my lifestyle.

I’m one of those people that isn’t ever satisfied if I’m only doing one thing. If something doesn’t require 100% of my focus, then I’ll almost certainly be doing something else in addition to it. Usually this means podcasts while playing video games, driving, drawing, etc. The last several weeks I’ve had nothing better to do, so I blasted through Oathbringer while I played a ton of Heroes of the Storm.

It’s sort of odd, because I feel like I’m wasting my time if I’m only doing one thing at a time (with the exception of writing, of course). I get virtually nothing out of playing Heroes, so even that sometimes feels unproductive. Couldn’t I be doing something better with my time while I listen to audiobooks? Like laundry, or general house tidying?

I know this probably sounds a bit crazy. I’m totally aware of how obsessed I am with this much constant productiveness, but it’s also who I’ve grown comfortable with being. If playing a video games with an audiobook in the background feels unproductive, I bet you can imagine how it feels when I’m not even listening to that audiobook. But this means I’m always getting things done.

Recently I’ve also taken on meditation, which interacts very strangely with that philosophy. Meditation is all about stopping and just enjoy the moment—doing absolutely nothing. I’ve heard lots of great things about meditation in the past, and while I do feel its helped me be more present in the moment, I don’t think it’s been groundbreaking as far as changing my lifestyle. Admittedly, it can still feel like a chore sometimes, but it works pretty well with reducing spikes in anxiety.

I’ve found that this whole mindset of “everything must have a productive purpose” is hard for other people to understand. I don’t really watch TV shows. If you want to get anything out of it you can’t do anything on the sidelines, and they’re often dozens, if not hundreds of hours long. Movies can be okay—you get through the entire beginning and end of the story in less than three hours—but even then I don’t make a habit of watching them. If I could, I’d watch classic movies a lot, though. I feel there’s a lot I could get out of them, it’s just hard for me in particular to get access to them.

And yet, where has all this gotten me? I personally don’t think this has given me any sort of upper hand among my peers as far as experience goes. If somebody asks me what I’ve been doing with my time not watching the shows and movies everyone has seen, I really wouldn’t know what to tell them. I wouldn’t say I’ve read a large amount of audiobooks, or played lots of different kinds of games. I don’t feel as though I’m much further ahead than anyone my age, really.

I suppose that’s probably pretty good. Maybe it means that no matter what you do or what you’ve done, somebody my age still has all the time in the world to be or do something completely new and worthwhile.