Late Night Fiction Avoiding the “kool-aid” everyone likes so much

Reflections

I've realized that I need to take a little time out of my daily routine to reflect. I need to think something for myself again. The thing is that I get so caught up in my surroundings that it becomes hard for me to be myself unless I'm in an extremely comfortable and done-this-before environment. But I'm purposely putting myself in the opposite situations right now-- because I want to learn more. I want to leave my comfort zone and be vulnerable to gather as much new information as possible.

So I need to look at what's really going on in my head. It would be most effective to do this in the moment that I'm in that new situation, but that's not only hard, but impractical. If I spent those moments in my head, I'd miss what was going on around me-- consequently not gathering much from the situation at all. But if I can look back on it or even have the me mindset going on before I get to a certain moment that requires it (such as interacting with people-- the main time I need it), I can learn as much as possible from the situation without overlooking it.

There's a problem: I usually reflect in my last waking moments of the day-- the time between when I remember I have to get up for work in the morning and when I decide I'm actually ready to close my eyes and shut down my brain (I usually don't decide I want to do the latter right away if I'm not yet satisfied with my day). So I lay there thinking-- on bad days, about things I can't control (other people, where I live, etc.) and on relatively better days I think about things I've been wondering (having to do with myself) and I work through them and I have my revelations. The problem is that these self-realizations don't help when they occur at the end of the day (although for the first time it made me wake up in a good mood today). I need to be able to have them during my day so I can, in a sense, wake up from the sort-of drifting state I can fall into by simply being in an environment that affects me.

So I'm setting aside time every day to do this. Whether this is on my smoke-break at work or when I drive to a place out of my hometown to sit for a while, I think I'll finally be able to stay sane and afloat in an environment that seems to constantly try to drown me.