A Life of Leisure, With Purpose

Life on the other side of employment is tricky. When I was young I used to take weeks, months off, collecting unemployment and cruising through months courtesy of the government. I love socialism. I was foolish, unattached, carefree, and most days stoned. There was always the curse of steady employment waiting as a punishment for my slothful, slovenly ways.

Now, though, there is nothing waiting at the end of the yellow brick road, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, he has nothing to do either. He is just another retired worker trying to puff himself up to an artificial importance.

Every day I get up and look at the screen on my phone. There are no important emails, no urgent text messages, no voice mails, most of the calls I get are spam. I live for the USPS Informed Delivery, it comes between 7:00 and 8:00 AM and lets me know if we will get mail, and what it will be.

Mostly I look at the lock screen and check the day and date. That’s how I track the successful passage of time. Several times a day I verify that vital statistic. It is a concrete, absolute measurement that gives definition and form to a life outside the restrictive, comforting lines of steady employment. It reminds me the world goes on, one step at a time. Life seems to demand structure.

It’s uncomfortable not having anything to do. Maybe it’s from early man, possibly the echoes of ancient ancestors whose idea of free time was finding a safe hole to cower in until the storms passed, and the sun came out. Possibly, years of clocks, alarm clocks, time clocks, the demands of production schedules have written their way into our DNA. It crawls into your thoughts in the middle of the night.

A pain in your hips and knees wake you when you roll over, and you lay there, enjoying the sweet agony, as it radiates up your back and into your shoulders, an exquisite sensation, or at least a feeling. Until you realize it means you need to move more. You sat on your sorry ass too long.

Even worse, it might a specific pain, an urge that won’t be denied.

“I have to go to the bathroom, and that’s all I have to do, nothing else. In the morning I’ll drink some coffee and eat breakfast, and it will start over again. My life is nothing more than the processing of nutrients, and liquids into waste matter. I’m reduced to an organic conversion facility.” There is nothing more depressing than a late-night visit to the restroom. All alone, darkness, silence, the atmosphere of the tomb, opening to welcome you, closing behind, and wrapping you in soft, forgiving folds of eternity.

It’s a terrible vise, squeezing you from the past and the future, until the present is only a short space in a long line of wasted seconds. Little bits of time from your past, time you wasted, sneaking off to have a cigarette, or playing video games, in the darkened recesses of the warehouse. Countering those are slight slices of eternity in the future that are waiting in ambush, time you haven’t had a chance to waste, yet. And all you can do is pray to Chronos and hope the deities governing time will forgive you.

Having a purpose will provide meaning, and offer a structure. It doesn’t have to be critical, or even important, all it needs is a definite object, with a clearly defined beginning, small, achievable steps and a reachable goal. I think it’s probably better if it’s something you don’t know much about, so you must pay close attention. Dive into it with abandon, and zeal, make it educational as well as beneficial.

Which is probably a good reason to choose something safe, with as little possibility for injury or property damage as you can manage. If you have any artistic ability you can try painting, or wood carving.

I found this on Twitter (or X, if you prefer, and I don’t) and it seems to make a lot of sense. Of course I haven’t tried any of it, yet, but I think I’ll give it a shot.