Not Sweating It

My previous post did not mean to say that I immediately and instinctively turn to the simple pleasures in enjoying my days. It is still, sadly, my first instinct to think of ways to “do something” with my time.

It’s quite funny—not quite “ha-ha” funny, but funny nevertheless—how many (so-called?) constructive manners I had planned on using my free time while not working. I saw myself reading, riding my bike, taking pictures of Buffalo upon my return, and maybe even taking up drawing again, just to name a few plans. There was so much that I was going to do that there wasn’t even going to be enough free time to do it all in, even without having to work.

While I have done each of these things to a certain extent, there is within each day a countless amount of time devoted to eating, cleaning, resting and general preparation in just getting ready for each that it is a wonder we have any time left to simply pass away at all, let alone the energy to do more.

To efficiently use my free time in manners such as reading or drawing takes a possessed determination that I do not possess. I am far more likely to be distracted and willingly talked into sitting on my front porch just talking with friends in the evening sun or playing cards with others than I am to find the self-determination to, say, read on my own. It’s not to say that I haven’t been reading, or what have you, at all. But, as rewarding as the intellectual pursuits that I have been taught are the epitome of the human existence can at times be, I have always shown a preference for the idle times of laughter and company.

These activities—as well as cooking and cleaning and sleeping—can, thanks to that part of our upbringing that always told us to do something with ourselves, leave an immense feeling of having accomplished nothing with one’s day or, in my current case, one’s unemployment time. But in the last few days alone I have ridden my bike, hung out with friends as we drank before going to our friends’ Cd release party at Mohawk Place on Saturday night, walked all the way home from the show, gone to the beach, met a friend for coffee, met up with others for some pitchers at Merlin’s, played hours of cards, and took a few unfortunate naps in between these activities. Combined, all of these took enough time to nearly fill my days and, while they prevented me from reading or any other such thing, in their being full of a constant festive laughter and levity were still nevertheless no less rewarding than any sort of intellectual pursuit. To despise these acts would be to despise my entire day. And what day has been given to us to find only misery in?

The monomania that compels one to create an art of any form is a subject, I admit, that I have a slight monomania about. The lengths some go to finishing such pursuits is a subject growing more and more foreign to me and yet I still am constantly finding myself having to justify to myself having “nothing” to show for my day. I am still in the process of making nothing, rather than something, my instinct. Until I fully accomplish this however, I do not care nor worry about this obvious contradiction (nor for that matter the obvious contradictions of writing about doing nothing; nor the fact that I am paying for the use of the Internet in order to write here about spending as little money as possible)—I don’t take life seriously enough to demand foolish consistencies (where would we find humor if we found only unbreakable, consistencies in the world?)—because at the end of the day I always remember that it is an undeniable truth that next to life art is nothing. Likewise, all the work we have grown to believe is doing something with our lives and selves is nothing next to life. The true art of doing nothing is simply enjoying the complete insignificance and frivolity of life—to believe in any more meaning in life is a burden I am unwilling to take up—best exemplified not in one’s work but rather in one's play. Like my friend Daren has said (http://thisisjoaquinsdollar.blogspot.com/), “nothing is important enough to break a sweat doing it.”