Nothing Doing
What do people do all day?
I was thinking about this all morning as I sat at work. It was a rainy friday and that meant there was nary an Italian Marketeer in sight. So after we cleaned and priced every inch of the store, there just wasn't much to do. I tried calculating the seconds until I left from the fractional amount of hours remaining and then after ticking the seconds off in my head for a while converting back into hour format. You know, so that I can compare my own internal clock against actual time.
But you can only do that so long.
And when I finally tired of my game I thought, "Gee, what if I had to do this all day every day?" I'm lucky enough to have OCD tendencies, how on earth does a normal person if left to their own devices pass the time? Because people are doing it all day every day. It's a subject I often kind of wonder about. When someone asks me "What did you do today?" I often come up with a couple specific highlights: Did some laundry, cleaned my room, watched a show, etc. But really, these things take what, A hour, two at most? And then I stop and think, what DID I do today?
The other day I had the whole day off and around noon I realized if I let myself I would review old movies and read the internet all day long. So I decided it was high time to cash in a gift card I got to the Black Cat Gift shop. Which for those not in the know = Way West Philly. So I walked from my house way down in low numbers in South Philly to 34th and Sansom, I spent about 20 minutes buying some pretty stationary and then I walked back home. It took me all day. I also bought a burrito in there too.
People have an unbelievable capacity to pass the time. I found this out the month I was in between jobs in October and stayed around the house all day, every day. It was not the high point of my existence. The funny things was, the more time I had, the less I seemed to do with it. I kept thinking, you could learn a language, go to the gym, read the great works of literature, you have infinite time to do infinite things. But instead I read popcorn books, worked out sparingly, and only learned a couple russian phrases.The more I stayed in the greater capacity I had to exert to leave. I didn't know why but it seemed like an inordinate amount of effort to do anything at all.
Why do we want to waste our time? I'm not sure. But it makes me realize that you have to light a fire under your ass whenever possible. Make plans, stick to them, keep your goals in mind because letting yourself float from function into formlessness is easier than it seems. Commit to an arbitrary decision, especially if it's arbitrary. Because sometime you just need to do something even if it's only for the sake of the doing.
So in that spirit, I am going to embrace this Friday eve. In other words I'm out my damies.
I was thinking about this all morning as I sat at work. It was a rainy friday and that meant there was nary an Italian Marketeer in sight. So after we cleaned and priced every inch of the store, there just wasn't much to do. I tried calculating the seconds until I left from the fractional amount of hours remaining and then after ticking the seconds off in my head for a while converting back into hour format. You know, so that I can compare my own internal clock against actual time.
But you can only do that so long.
And when I finally tired of my game I thought, "Gee, what if I had to do this all day every day?" I'm lucky enough to have OCD tendencies, how on earth does a normal person if left to their own devices pass the time? Because people are doing it all day every day. It's a subject I often kind of wonder about. When someone asks me "What did you do today?" I often come up with a couple specific highlights: Did some laundry, cleaned my room, watched a show, etc. But really, these things take what, A hour, two at most? And then I stop and think, what DID I do today?
The other day I had the whole day off and around noon I realized if I let myself I would review old movies and read the internet all day long. So I decided it was high time to cash in a gift card I got to the Black Cat Gift shop. Which for those not in the know = Way West Philly. So I walked from my house way down in low numbers in South Philly to 34th and Sansom, I spent about 20 minutes buying some pretty stationary and then I walked back home. It took me all day. I also bought a burrito in there too.
People have an unbelievable capacity to pass the time. I found this out the month I was in between jobs in October and stayed around the house all day, every day. It was not the high point of my existence. The funny things was, the more time I had, the less I seemed to do with it. I kept thinking, you could learn a language, go to the gym, read the great works of literature, you have infinite time to do infinite things. But instead I read popcorn books, worked out sparingly, and only learned a couple russian phrases.The more I stayed in the greater capacity I had to exert to leave. I didn't know why but it seemed like an inordinate amount of effort to do anything at all.
Why do we want to waste our time? I'm not sure. But it makes me realize that you have to light a fire under your ass whenever possible. Make plans, stick to them, keep your goals in mind because letting yourself float from function into formlessness is easier than it seems. Commit to an arbitrary decision, especially if it's arbitrary. Because sometime you just need to do something even if it's only for the sake of the doing.
So in that spirit, I am going to embrace this Friday eve. In other words I'm out my damies.
posted by A at 7:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home