the sins of rip van winkle

it's been well over a year and all i can say is... it felt like a whole year of procrastination.

i stepped out of the university with gusto and readiness to take on the world. we'll change the world.
we'll make a transforming difference. magis to the max.

one year on, and i've wasted a year. weekends given to sleeping and idling away. from one random obsession - say DVD box sets - to the next - another DVD box set, or some new thing for the apartment. weekdays spent toiling over work. late evenings watching more and more TV, downloading more and more shows.

tv shows i've watched obsessively just last year - West Wing (all 7 seasons... twice), Stargate (8 seasons), Lost (all 2 seasons), Alias (2 seasons), Monk (2 seasons), Numb3rs (all 2 seasons), House M.D. (all 2 seasons), Battlestar Galactica (1 season). Not to mention occassional trips to the moviehouse and scheduling weekends around the HBO and Cinemax schedule. All told, 1000+ hours spent in front of a screen with moving things inside. 40 full days, give or take. And the number of non-work related books i've read in full? FOUR! Einstein's Dreams, the entire set of Series of Unfortunate Events, 4 Poirot novels, and the Ultimate Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy. Pathetic. My college-me would whoop and kick my ass in less than a minute if he heard.

not to mention the weight i've put on. (In the interest of saving myself from embarassment, we shall spare the details).

the number of promises I made to myself that have been broken are ridiculously long.
and the reasons I give myself is embarassingly unexcusable.

people have gotten engaged. people have died. people have come. people have left. people have risen to awesome personal achievement. people have failed. people have succeded. and yet here I am, more than a year before, much the same.

it is as alan lightman put it... time is fixated with motion. the more we stand stil, the more others who are passengers of time hastily move in the background of our vision.

the unexamined life truly is not worth living. let it be examined then, from hereon end.