Tonight's Bike Ride, Part II: Do Nothing About It

If the best things in life are indeed free then what are we working ourselves to death for?

For me, it’s the desire for travel. To move around and stay in motion because that motion is a motion against the stability of the settling down I still swear I am against. I am aware of the possibility to do it as a hobo for no money at all, but I am also aware of a certain standard that I am still unwilling to compromise.
(And it is in having something to actually work for—Goddamnit—that ultimately prevents me from begrudging anyone who does work, whether it be for a home or a family or what have you, because we each have our carrot on the stick that we find worth working for. If nothing else, maybe I am just trying to chase a stick of celery, one I will salt the hell out of, instead of a the same carrot stick?)

And that’s why I still work: just for the possibility of going somewhere else again.

Yet it’s hard for me, even with that possibility lingering, because, besides having to tell myself I am not compromising my idea of doing nothing, when I work I pressure myself to be constructive with my time when I come home and if I am not I almost overwhelm myself with a sense of disappointment (with myself). But when I don’t work, I do not have that urge to do anything at all; only the desire to literally do nothing at all and find little disappointment with such a thing. Perhaps that is yet another reason why I grow so easily frustrated with the idea of work: it requires of me (thanks to internal pressure from myself) to do a specific kind of nothing instead of whatever kind of nothing I wish to do. It inhibits even my options of nothing.

And it’s always hard for me to do something specific (just to sit here and write this is usually difficult because I always know that I could be doing something else—I still haven’t hung up the picture my roommate drew of me sleeping on the couch; I could put my rear light back on my bike) because doing something specific is doing something. And vice versa, doing something is to do something specific. Or, doing nothing specific is doing nothing.

Like the Renaissance Man who is an expert in nothing but familiar with everything, I do not want to be tied down to one specific thing at any given moment. I do not need an expert to support what experience itself can show me and thus can find myself overwhelmed by all the options that are before me when I wish to do nothing at all.

By the end of my bike ride, my body was well exercised and my mind a bit more focused. I was glad to be riding in Buffalo but knew that I didn't plan on staying there forever. And I was even reassured that it would be alright for me to sit here for a short time and write out some thoughts, and even waste a few more months working, because it was by no means ever required to do so. Nothing specific ever is required for me to do. I just find myself thinking that it is sometimes and that's when I need to do nothing about it, like go on a bike ride. Then I find myself back at ease and in the moment of eternal nothingness.