I spend every working weekday looking forward to the work-free weekend so I can have some time just for myself. A couple of days free of obligation, doing things I want to do, rather than things I have to do. I crave for some “me” time, if you like.
But it turns out that my “me” time is actually like the mildest, most un –tantalising chicken korma ever. A bland porridge with no sugar; made with water instead of milk. Or one of those anticlimactic veggie burgers comprised of mashed potato and peas (a reference mainly for the veggoes - but aren’t those discs of non-meat emulation just the most anticlimactic culinary cop-out ever?).
When the weekend finally arrives, it’s almost like I become over-awed with all the possibilities of all the things I could do, and yet nothing I can think of doing ever seems anything other than wasteful. Like making good headway into that book I borrowed from the library, or say, watching that that film that’s been stuck on the freeview box for months, or finally cleaning those white splatters of winged-creature poo off my car (which incidentally are so gigantic it almost seems infeasible they came from a bird’s tiny anus. I am starting to hope that human’s aren’t the only living beings currently hit by an obesity crisis, because such excremental levels would otherwise imply that pterodactyls have made a return to the living world, and chose to reside in my tiny, non-descript, middle-class village).
But all of these things take an investment of seemingly unaffordable time. They just seem like a diversion from a path of greater fulfilment. And these ideas always fall short of my grandiose intent. They distract me from starting work on my first major literary work, or learning a new language, or going feral for a couple of days to experience the richness of real life outside my tiny, non-descript, middle-class village. All of which I genuinely intend to do. Just not right now. But definitely soon.
And there lies the rub. I am basically cursed by an opposing lure of frivolous tasks and leisure pursuits against bigger projects so grand they’re actually just too intimidating to tackle. And by the time I’ve finished fretting about the most beneficial usage for my free time, I realise I’ve just lost eight hours blankly staring at the “Price Drop TV” channel; and once again the day’s only achievement was the onset of a state of bored self-loathing.
Sometimes I wish there was a supervisory ‘caretaker’ who could take over the direction of my life now and again, leaving me to drift along in autopilot whist a diary of activity is imposed by an authoritative voice making all my decisions for me. Some of the more libertarian readers might argue how this would effectively eradicate the “free-will”; the beautiful essence of what it is to be human in the first place. But I disagree. Time is to be appreciated and our existence is precious. We are incomprehensibly lucky to even have our brief spell in the universe. So I reckon when someone like me comes along with a complete inability to take the reins of their own life, then surely time is better filled by any means possible rather than so haplessly frittered?
POSTSCRIPT
(...actually now I’ve had a chance to think, this entry might sound like a dark plea for the onset of schizophrenia, rather than the gentle ‘sat nav for the soul’ schlock I’d originally envisaged. Maybe it’s best we disregard everything I’ve written so far and make a fresh start tomorrow, where we can all turn a new leaf. A brand new week, where anything could happen. Yes, that sounds rather liberating. Perhaps this will be the week I’ll finally start on one of my major tasks.)
