Memo to the reader: I thought about titling this piece "On vacation," in the same way that one might title a treatise, "On the Gods," or "On human nature." But I realized that most people would assume it just meant, "I'm going to be away from my computer and not writing for a while." In this case that's not what I mean. Hence the slightly clunkier title.
Well, I almost was—at the end of another highly unproductive and useless day. (I keep hoping my days will be productive. But that would require that I actually had the will to accomplish something, and that will is often missing.) But then I thought of an interesting pattern. I wanted to record it before I forgot it, and so here we are.
It's just this. You've heard me complain about being stuck, dead in the water, accomplishing nothing. I've blamed it on booze and on Twitter, both of which are indeed serious contributors to my time-wasting. But both of them are enablers, not root causes. The reality is, This is something I do.
So for example:
When I was a little kid I loved school but hated summer vacation, because it was always so boring. Sure, it was nice not to have the pressure of assignments. But at the same time I didn't know what to do with myself. And I could only go bicycling around the neighborhood ... or the next neighborhood ... or miles down the main drag to see where it went ... before even that got boring. I suppose I could have been learning new skills or reading Great Books, but somehow I settled for old "Get Smart" reruns instead.
I didn't apply for jobs or graduate school while in college, so in September of the year I graduated I had nowhere to go. I hung around my parents' house doing a few chores but nothing else in particular. Today someone would have diagnosed me as part of a generational trend; but back in the 1980's I was just a bum. I fantasized about graduate school, and even applied to a couple. I got admitted to one, flew there to move in—and then dropped out before classes started. I didn't really want to go there. Also, I had just met Wife, and I was more interested in fucking than studying. So I came back home and spent another year looking for stupid time-filling work. (I ended up substitute teaching, although I wasn't very good at it.) I spent all my free time with Wife. The next summer we actually married, and then went off to a whole different graduate school in a whole different discipline. (I guess I should say "pair of disciplines" because we were both graduate students at that time.)
When I bailed out of graduate school (a story I tell briefly here), I had to find work. But for four years I worked as a clerk in a library. It helped pay the bills, but it was neither exciting nor demanding. I wasn't exactly coasting during that time, but for the most part my struggles were all outside of work: with landlords, with auto repair shops, and especially with Wife. (This was during the time that she was involved with Boyfriend 1, which made things very difficult for a while. Also we just fought a lot because ... well, that's what we did.) I had to work on growing up into an adult, but my job was mostly not part of that process. (There was one exciting and harrowing exception, and maybe someday I'll talk about it.)
Fast forward twelve or thirteen years, and in the early 2000's I was thrown out of work. What can I say? The tech business is like that. This time I had to stay busy. Wife was out of work on disability; I had house payments to make; and we had two children to support. I had a large severance package from my last job, due to an amazing set of coincidences; but in the end it was barely enough to support us for the year-and-a-half that I was unemployed. So I spent a lot of time applying to jobs. But I also spent time making wine from the apricots we grew in the backyard, and writing philosophy, and taking naps in the middle of the day. As vacations go, this was my busiest—for all the reasons that I've just mentioned. But it was still a kind of vacation.
And so here I am. Out of work again. No house payments to make. (Just rent.) No kids to support. No Wife to support. (The very last payments I am ever committed to send her ended last month.) And I've got enough savings to keep food on the table, even if not in a lavish style.
So what should I expect. Of course I'm sitting around bored and unmotivated!
This is something I do.
On the other hand, if this is how it's going to be for the next twenty or thirty years, maybe I need to reconsider that. In the short run the solitude is relaxing; but in the long run it may make me crazy. Or worse.
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