Well…nothing is technically something when you consider it, right?
Somewhere long ago, someone coined the phrase “idle hands are the Devil’s plaything.” Truth be told, I think the Devil would be more inclined to use bulldozers or Michael Flatley as his playthings, since both can inflict more widespread damage. Yet unpleasant things can and often do happen when you’re idle.
It disturbs me to look back on the last few days, and marvel at how incredibly, brilliantly and assuredly useless I have been. This is not a good marveling, to be sure. With the exception of a few writing side-projects (one of which, should it get finished in the next few months, will mean interesting times ahead), I don’t have a lot to show for the last 72 hours.
Well…if we tried to break the last three down to its basic components, roughly 24 hours were spent sleeping. 2 hours saw me doing some puppetry for a group of people at Sunbeam, a group home for the developmentally challenged. Probably 3-4 hours were spent preparing meals, gorging myself on said meals (but in a very polite napkin-dabbing-on-the-cheek sort of way) and then cleaning up afterwards. And in a little slice of “Too Much Information” the odds are about 2 hours were spent in the bathroom doing bathroomy things. Mainly showering.
This leaves us with 40 hours of respective free time.
I probably could have solved some sort of horrid University-level Calculus equation by now. Well…faked having solved some sort of horrid University-level Calculus equation. Or else copied the answer from a friend of mine also taking the course, then gone out and got completely pissed drunk with the realization that I’d never pass that University-level Calculus course. Those courses are the Devil’s plaything too, come to think of it.
Yet even that would have made for an interesting water-cooler story.
Of course, that would require me going out to find a water-cooler to stand beside and regale my story to other passers-by. That could have probably helped me do something productive with my time.
This general malaise seems to be plaguing me more often than not. Certainly it’s because I have way too much spare time on my hands, and too many household distractions to ease the unpleasant slip into lethargy. But I’m always for weeding out a scapegoat and blaming it instead of taking form of personal responsibility.
I blame the afternoon.
You see, the afternoons are my most unproductive hours ever. From roughly 1pm to sunset, I am about as useful as a nacho cheese-flavoured Timbit. I don’t know why that is. Unless I’m out doing something of pressing importance, I lapse into apathy. I lose all focus for doing almost anything. The Internet bores me. TV bores me. Writing is near impossible to do. Reading is almost as vexing a task. For some inexplicable reason, the afternoon hours are horrid black holes sucking away at my will to live like a temporal parasite.
So long as I can get started on something in the mornings, I’m grand. After the sun goes down? Watch me be productive, or at least feel good about whatever it was I’d managed to get accomplished before falling asleep! But afternoons…bah.
I could do something productive and sleep through afternoons, but I enjoy just having one large sleeping session. If I try otherwise, my internal clock starts refusing to tick right. And the afternoon has rudely sandwiched itself between two sets of productive hours for me. If the afternoon and the morning switched places, I’d be all set. I could just stay awake all morning and for most of the night, and then sleep all afternoon.
All humour aside, I am looking for things to busy my ample spare time with. Like a job. Or write non-stop. Or learn how to play ping-pong. Or memorize Neil Gaiman’s book “American Gods” backwards.
Today’s Lesson: it’s never my fault. It’s the afternoon that’s to blame. That, and the squirrels.
posted by Phillip at 6:31 PM
