Boredom

There are a lot of really commonly held myths out there. There are some things people just believe that aren't really true at all, but everyone sort of just believes it or buys into it. A simple example would be that pit bulls are violent. They aren't really at all. Another would be mind-body dualism, popular since the days of Descartes. Another things that's not really true. There are tons more of these, but there's one myth in particular that I've been thinking of a lot lately. Everyone thinks that work is bad, the sort of thing you only do because you have to. When I say I have the whole summer off, everyone is like, "oh I'm jealous." Really? I mean, really? What would you do if you had nothing you had to do? Depending on the person, you might get by just fine for the first week or so, but after a while, you start to run out of things to do. When you have nothing to do, that's when you really start to realize that there are 24 hours in the day, 24 long hours. Sure you can sleep away 8, maybe even 9 of them on a regular basis. You can cook for another two the three. You can take advantage of the greatest time waster, TV for perhaps 5, though you start to feel a bit sickly by the end of that. That takes us to 17 hours. There's still 7 hours to go. You can probably exercise for an hour of that. Down to 6. I've been surviving the last week or so filling that time with video games. That can cover about 4 more. Those were my most generous estimates and there are still two hours left in the day. I try to be a little productive, maybe fold some clothes or something, but there really aren't that many chores to do around the house. Sometimes I fill some time by taking a trip to the store. I recently read some comic books. Then I ran out of decent comic books to read. I try to get out of the house too, but I have nowhere to go most of the time. Everyone I'd like to hang out with is usually working and then when people are free, that's when Steven comes home and that's when I want to be cooking and spending time with him.

I don't mean to whine or go on bemoaning my free time or anything, but I do want to illustrate that there really isn't that much to do if all you've got is free time. And frankly, most of time fillers I listed above get really old after a while. I don't watch 5 hours of tv a day. I don't sleep 9 hours either. There's just a lot of time in the day when there's nothing you have to do. I'll probably figure out some way eventually to occupy myself with projects or something, but it's hard to get the energy to do anything when you don't have to do anything. Being woken up by an alarm and forced to go do something really gives you the energy to actually do it. When it's ok to sleep in and if you're not in the mood to do something it's no big deal, then things start to go bad. Since there's nothing I have to do, there's not a lot of meaning in anything I do. No one's counting on me to do anything. No one will mind if I go a day or two or three just lazing around. It's just not a very fun state to be in.

And this purgatory is what retirement must be like. And yet I know lots of people looking forward to their retirement and planning to retire as soon as possible. My dad has been wanting to retire for a while. Steven's dad is the same. He's going to retire as soon as he can. I hope he finds better ways to fill his time than I have because I think at that age, once you retire, you can't really go back. If there wasn't work on the horizon, I would be even more miserable. People go downhill after they retire. I've seen a lot of spry looking 70 year olds and the common link seems to be that they kept active and continued working. It doesn't have to be an 80 hour work week. Even part time would be enough. But having things that you have to do is kind of a gift. That's something that it took me a summer to get to learn. Next summer I'm going to be much more aggressive about finding myself something I need to do. I'll feel a lot better if I don't have so much free time like now.