I found this week during my podcast listening sessions the concept of slow TV thanks to this episode of Invisibilia, to give you a resume of it, the whole concept is to produce a show with no plot, no characters, and surely no tension… Have you seen those live streams on YouTube of trains on Norway? Well, that’s basically it.
This concept on paper sounds so simple and yet, it isn’t. It made me feel uncomfortable for a reason, it made me listen to my inner thoughts and start thinking about the story of my life, it made me daydream of things and I should be doing or that I wanted to do and I haven’t done because I haven’t put the time to do them.
It all started with untaken trips that I should 100% do, but it grew further than that. Why haven’t I taken these trips? Why haven’t I put the time into researching what would make them possible? etc. And after a while contemplating the railroad and these beautiful nordic scenarios, it hit me.
I haven’t put the work into taking the narrative of the things I’m doing into my own hands, I have been relying on others to set that narrative.
Now that I understood and made this realization I started extrapolating it on more day to day things that I do, this might sound funny or small and unimportant, but I was truly constant on my lunchtime and I like to have my lunchtime between 1:00-2:00 pm because it works great with my time schedule or so I wanted to believe, honestly I have been saying no to things I could do, or moved things around my calendar more, but because I had this hard timeline for such a small thing, I started to compromise on other elements of my life and shape things around it, and it all started because that was the best time for others on previous workplaces for me to have my lunch.
I know, it sounds silly, I’m here writing it for you and I’m smiling at my words, but it’s my truth, it’s my story. And I want you to think about your story…
Our whole life is ~5200 weeks of which you spent the first ~1000 week listening to what other things you should do and not free to make your own decisions, then you’ll probably spend the next ~2000 weeks assuming responsibilities and living your adulthood, this is the time to make the things you want and find what you want to do with your life.
Those numbers made a big impact on my mindset, as someone that likes analyzing data, it made me question a few things that I’m currently doing and set me on a path to rectify and change the things I need to change to become a healthier, and happier person all around.
Now, don’t twist my words, I’m not saying that leaving the narrative to others from time to time hasn’t paid off in some way and that I’m at a bad place because of it, what I’m saying is that I could be doing more of the things I want and I care if I take the power of my narrative back and overall I believe this is the purpose of Slow TV, put the control on the hands of the viewer literally and make you put yourself into the center of the story as part of your thinking process.
When was the last time you did something because you wanted to do it? When was the last time you made a decision at work because you truly believed in it and not because it was what others may want to hear? — These are some of the questions I want you to develop about your life.