Slow Afternoon

Last night I slept at around 12 midnight, woke at 6 am the next morning, roughly 6 hours of sleep, eating breakfast of yogurt, banana and boiled egg and at the office by 7:45 am, attending a meeting at 8 am and drinking coffee in the meeting room.  By the afternoon, after a heavy Cuban lunch of yellow rice, beans and roasted pork, plus eating my ‘usual’ lunch of 4 carrot sticks, 30 pieces of almond nuts and a small brownie plus green tea; my brain is sluggish, unable to move forward on my To Do List. By 3 pm, I had attended 3 meetings during the day, replied to a number of emails and worked on my tickets in the computer system. Roughly 2 hours left before the end of the work day with my mind slowing down to a crawl, exhausted by lack of sleep, a heavy lunch and too much work to do. But I have my To Do List all set,  but the mind and body is weak, although the spirit is more than willing, realizing that age is coming to claim one’s youth, unable to move forward because the mind is moving in mud.

After lunch, I drank my usual tablets of Gingko Biloba and St. John’s Wort, hoping that these supplements will give me the second wind of the day, to allow me to breeze through until the end of work at 5 pm. I still have to attend another seminar tonight from 7 – 8:30 pm at the local library, a seminar on writing.  Somehow I must soldier on, doing my task list and ticking them off one by one until the day’s goals are done. But I lack the ‘psychic bandwidth’ with all the incoming email and work demands; the volume of work further causing one to exhaust his mind. Last night I watched a lecture in YouTube on productivity, where David Allen spoke about his GTD process (Get Things Done) then reading on the agile and kanban method of software development while listening to the music of Anuskha Shankar. I think I have found the technology and tool to help me, but this afternoon it looks like my brain is slowing to a crawl; listless, pressured and distracted at the task at hand. I am unable to work unless I  get my vitality back through breathing, journal writing or drinking more coffee.

Recently, I have been reading various books on the science of healthy aging, how to avoid dementia by exercise, diet and mental challenges, plus the other areas to be followed like drinking tea, being sociable, and so on while my mind struggles to keep awake, nodding off and struggling to complete work. I think I am heading towards the life I would like to lead, shredding the distracting and procrastinating habits, working smart and following a reasonable regimen of diet and exercise. But the minds still strays, psychic energy slipping away while one tries to bring the vitality back via writing and breathing exercises. The mind thinks about many things that cause stress, like wondering why the chief of staff is wandering the corridors, walking into cubicles like mine and handing out pamphlets about India, wondering if this is an attempt to check me out, my paranoia amplified by my internet browsing at work (‘will we go to war in Syria?’) or the heated political discussions with my neighbor, a battle between conservative and liberal arguments. I don’t know how he can focus and continue working while I struggle with my procrastination and tired brain. There is still much to learn, grasshopper.