Philosophy behind software, life and love

More on mindfulness, before continuing with the disconnect:

10 Ways to be More Mindful

1. Stop and breathe. Take in the moment and breathe.
2. Look around - who do you see? What do you see?
3. Stop thinking about how well you are doing. Do what you are doing.
4. Stop thinking about what others are thinking about.
5. Take a look at your hands. Take them in.
6. Don't think about yesterday or tomorrow - think about now.
7. Don't think about deadlines.
8. Instead of avoiding what bothers you, accept it.
9. Accept that there are things that you don't know - and that's okay.
10. Sit. Do nothing.

There is a connection between mindfulness and the disconnect that comes from working with the abstract. It's something I'm going to explore here. For me, there's a tension between the two that I'm very familiar with. More on that tension later.

Part of the goal of working with mindfulness is to be more aware. More aware of my internal processes, how I feel, what I want, and who is around me. I believe this is important for keeping myself honest. If I don't know what I want, or how to analyze my emotions and what they mean, then it's easy for me to lose myself, and it becomes harder to come back.

That's been my experience.

With the abstract and programming, I can dive into exciting and interesting projects for hours and hours. It's happened before, where my wife was trying to talk to me, and it was obvious I wasn't there. My mind was off trying to solve a distributed parallel problem, and she was wondering why I didn't have an opinion on what she was talking about. I was listening to her, and I was responding, but I wasn't communicating effectively. I wasn't there enough to actually process what she was saying and connect it to my own experiences and beliefs. This has caused me some strife.

That's the disconnect.

That's where mindfulness comes in. How do I stop for a moment and bring myself to the now?

I did the list above as an opening to this post as an exercise. I wanted to see how much I could come up with if I stopped to think about mindfulness. It wasn't my effort alone, to be honest. I went as far as 4 before I started reading an article about mindfulness to get the juices flowing. Mindfulness isn't something I'm very experienced with.

I feel anxious about being in the now because it goes against what I've been taught and what I've been raised with. The very act of mindfulness means that for a time, I am in the now. This implies that I'm not working on improving myself (an action towards the future), I'm not trying to solve any problems, and I'm not avoiding my weaknesses. I live for that constant improvement. Yet...

If I spend all my time improving myself, it comes at a cost.

That's why I'm interested in mindfulness.