On Indolence

I woke up early, before seven, without any agenda for the day. The boy was headed to play a round of golf, so after I saw him off, I had the house entirely to myself. I went to make coffee and I sat on the deck, smoking cigarettes, thinking about what I was going to do with my day.

There seems to be this growing sense of discontent among the ‘neurotic, occasionally weltschmerz, intellectual women.’ (T.S.T, I hope you don’t mind my frequent borrowing of this phrase that you coined. I don’t think I would be able to come up with anything else that would describe our lot so accurately and be so inclusive in doing so.) What seems to bother us is how little we do these days with our free time, despite the fact that we see ourselves as ambitious, driven, hard working, etc... Restless indolence – a reoccurring theme, or rather a state that I am way too familiar with. I alternate between periods of intense intellectual work and productivity and periods of complete slothfulness. The latter occurs when my day is no longer structured around classes, assignments, deadlines… The much anticipated break suddenly becomes an unbearable nightmare of sorts, because even if I make plans to do this or that, I know that I inevitably end up not doing a single thing at all… The frustration, the growing dissatisfaction is the worst, since instead of enjoying all the free time for what it is, I keep scolding myself for being such a sloth, for clearly I could be doing something with this time, I should be doing something with this time, I must do something, anything… so on and so forth.

I called my mother to complain. “But it’s normal,” she said, “we all do that. You’re not lazy or irresponsible. You just don’t feel driven at this point and it is not something that you can force upon yourself. When the time comes, you’ll get everything done and I know that you’ll do it well. The only question is whether you make yourself feel miserable in the meantime or simply let yourself be…”

Oh words of wisdom… why is it that I find so little comfort in you…

***
But really, when I come to think about it, I realize how right she is. I can’t force drive and inspiration upon myself. Some people can. There are also those who would read this and laugh – inspiration is not even something that they would question. How I envy them, the kind of folks who know what they need/want to do and do it, slowly, methodically, regardless whether there are pressing deadlines or not. And then I though – urgency, urgency, but of course!

***
On Saturday I had spent my morning and most of the afternoon writing On Women Blogging. It wasn’t easy writing it in the sense that it required the kind of effort and concentration that I normally devote to my math take home exams. It wasn’t easy at all, but really, nobody was asking, let alone expecting me to do it. And yet, I did it anyway. Because I felt that there is this sense of urgency – it was important that I wrote it then and not at some indefinite point in the future. The funny thing is that had I thought about it leisurely, like I think about many things that I want to do, had I put in on some kind of to-do list, I would have hardly gotten around doing it – not within an afternoon, at least. But I did it, anyways… With half the effort and the same time I could have read and summarized four articles for my research project. With even less the effort I would have processed four bankruptcy cases. But the reason that I chose to write the blog piece instead of working on the articles is because I felt the urgency about doing the former, whereas there was no such pressure in doing the latter. Not at this point, at least.

In about a month these damn articles will become a pressing urgency. The anxiety, or rather the itch to sit down and work on the research project will become tangible a little before that. I will spend my days doing little to nothing else but that. I will squeeze in two months’ work in two weeks. I will finish the project – I will finish it well.

My mother is right – the way I spend this time now, the way I choose to feel about this time, or rather, myself, is entirely up to me. I can make myself feel miserable or simply let it be. And since I cannot whip up inspiration out of thin air anyway, I might just as well enjoy it without feeling defeatist about it.

***
I went upstairs, to what I call my hiding room and sat there for a long long time, playing music and looking out of the window. I didn’t do anything else. I didn’t come down until the boy was back.

When I look back months from now at this past summer, one of the things that I will remember is just that – I will see myself sitting by the window, lost in thought yet thinking about nothing in particular. I will see myself in this big, bright, still somewhat empty apartment, moving from room to room without that sense of urgency to do anything else. I will feel nostalgic. I will miss it – being alone in the big apartment, with nothing pressing on my mind and an entire day ahead of me to be spent on doing absolutely nothing. I will miss it because I know that the minute school starts, I will no longer have the luxury of doing just that. I will no longer be noticing these little things about this place that delight me now. I will start going through everyday motions on some kind of autopilot – nothing else will exist beyond that – I will be solving problems, playing with formulas and building models in my head. I will become the person that will once again fit the description of driven, ambitious, hard working. Today there is no need to be that.

***
I spent the rest of the day doing miscellaneous household chores. I cleaned the kitchen. I packed my clothes. Later I cooked dinner…