What I’m Reading: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

It took multiple approaches for me to finally get through this one. The novel focuses on the life of Binx Bolling, a near 30-year-old stockbroker living in New Orleans. As with most classic novels of the time, our character is confronting his drab world and conducting a “search,” presumably we think for deep philosophical answers. Unlike most books of this genre, however, there are no quests, dramatic episodes. Just the chronicles of Binx’s normal life, meaningless days at the office, and almost too-normal relationships with family and flings. At first, it was this extreme normality that pushed me away from the book. But, it turned out to be its charm. Of all of the novels I have read, it is perhaps the most reasonable in its philosophy, and therefore, the one we might be able to learn from most.

What I‘m Experimenting With: Chunking

As opposed to “sprinkling,” “chunking” is a method of dividing up your time into large chunks typically multiple hours or a whole day, wholly focused on one activity or project. Between, classes, career, creative projects and personal time, I was struggling to focus on anything at one and jumped from thing to thing throughout the day. The consequence was that I really wasn’t making a lot of headway and I always had too much going on at once. Given, that I am only now in classes two days a week. I decided to double down on those days, doing any and all work related to college in my free time. It was an amazing change. By finishing any and all mandatory class work on those days, I have given myself the freedom to focus on my creative projects or personal time on the other five. The risk, of course, is that two days is not enough. But, even giving myself that edge and freedom of mind have been extremely useful.

A Quote I’m Thinking About:

“The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”

– Walker Percy, The Moviegoer