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| It's current incarnation |
Because what happens during this free
time when I'm at my place instead of with my girlfriend at hers, if
I'm alone and not saved by one of my roommates, it is always the same: I I eat a bunch of ice cream in
front of the computer. I answer all kinds of emails, I've finally
gotten myself to stop working on my food blog at night, as a rule,
but sometimes I have some little task to do, like posting my newest
cartoon on my and two friend's Facebook walls, organizing my Netflix
queues, trying out some songs that have been recommended to me, recording the
latest book or movie I've finished (I keep lists of all the book I
read and movies I watch. TV shows too, though less rigorously),
things like that.
Just a few minutes ago, I realized I didn't really have any
chores left for the day, and I kind of panicked. “Well, now what am I going to do with my
time?” I thought. “Oh! I could have fun surfing the web randomly
like I used to always do and love doing.” But then I thought,
“Wait, are you sure there's nothing left you really ought to do?”
Then I gave myself the task of writing
this. While writing it, I've more-or-less unintentionally thought of
a few more things I ought to do tonight. For instance, I need to
answer back an email to a company that wants me to confirm my date
and time and give them the Groupon number for this class I'm taking
with them. I don't know why, but for some reason that particular task
seems particularly trying. I suppose it's because Groupon's wesbite
is shitty, and I know it might be annoying to find this stupid number
for them*.
Then I tell myself that a good
use of my time might be to read a good book. Right now my bedside
book is Alan Watt's The Way of Zen. Or
maybe I should play the dancing game on the XBOX 360 or just dance by
myself in my room. It's fun, I often love doing it, and
it's good exercise to make me
feel better about all the ice cream I've just eaten. But I'm just too full to dance.
I've become so uncomfortable doing anything purely for fun. I seem unable to relax if what I'm doing isn't in some way productive. Maybe
that's all my mom with the school year's regimen of school, homework,
two chores, room cleaning, and thirty minutes of piano practice
before we could play on the computer or video games or watch TV
(thirty minutes total for all electronic devices) and the summer
system she kept in a pink binder full of lined notebook paper she'd
made into a grid by using a pencil to draw vertical lines along the
pages. Four chores, thirty minutes of piano, one scripture copied out
in a journal, journal writing, a math worksheet, room cleaning, and
twelve exercise points. There was a reference chart that indicated
how many points one earned by doing x number of each exercise. Ten
pushups were 1 point. Five laps were 1 point. Twenty-five jumping
jacks. We went to our section of the pink binder and placed a little
check in the grid corresponding to the task and the day of the week,
Arielle
Monday Tuesday Wednesday
Room x
Piano
Chore x
Chore x
Chore
Chore
Scripture x
Etc.
I need
a fucking pink binder. I need to check, check, check, check, check
things off the list, accomplish useful things, things that are good
for me, until I can allow myself to relax and enjoy my day. But I
don't have a pink binder. I do have email and note pads (physical and
iPod) and scraps of paper full of to do lists, but once those are
done, I still don't quite feel the satisfaction of the pink binder.
Because that was definite, prescribed from on high, as it were. But as an adult, there might always be more things I
ought to be doing.
Perhaps
a lot of that is twenty-something anxiety, I don't know, I guess I
hope so.
"Torschlusspanik" - German – Translated literally, this word means “gate-closing panic,” but its contextual meaning refers to “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages."
*It was.
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