Get A Haircut And Get A Real Job

I think my unemployed days are numbered. How can something be both what you want and desperately don’t want all at once? After all, what’s not to love about being unemployed? There’s time to cook, see friends, take long walks, read fascinating books and sleep in. Bedtime is after you’ve squeezed every useable minute out of the day for all those worthy activities because no alarm clock will disrupt your morning slumber. The digit that leads the clock face when I finally give up on my day is most often a ‘two’ and by then, my little companion is in REM sleep and therefore I cause him no trouble. Surely, this is the way life should be.

But then there’s the reality. I COULD cook, but i don’t really feel like it. I could see friends, but to seek out friends to spend time with during the day is to admit to them or yourself that you need company, and quite frankly, i am far too busy to see all those people all the time – the hours of my time off are, after all, incredibly precious. Long walks... yeah, I like those, but sometimes it’s windy out there and sometimes there is a load of washing you have to wait to finish so that you can put it on the line and then it will be too late in the day to go gallivanting off for an hour and a half. No, really. There are lots of hurdles to progress in my long unemployed days.

To jump ahead and then back again, as I have clearly mastered the ‘sleep in’, the problem lies in the’ reading fascinating books’. It may be true that the ‘me’ that i like the most is the one sprawled on the couch in the afternoon sun reading vital literature and listening to classical music (probably with something delicious shooting aromas in my direction from the kitchen), but the me that gets me through each day is the housekeeping me. The laundry basket is empty the minute it contains enough for a load, the fridge is cleaned out, the beds are all straightened regularly, and then there is the daily grind of sweeping a house with floorboards throughout. My workmanship is sometimes shoddy as i operate a little like the NSW Police Force: ‘Now Targeting Living Room Clutter’, ‘Now Targeting Possum Poo On Deck’, ‘Now Targeting Living Room Clutter Again’. Meanwhile, the pile of discarded clothes beside my bed is my deepest shame, and that mountain of clean washing resulting from an impeccable laundry schedule is just not folding itself – instead, it obstructs me from the sheets on the spare bed that I assume are in need of good straightening under ten loads of clean washing.

I don’t think I am to blame for the worthiness that is incomplete. I have a very active Facebook lifestyle that needs to be maintained, i feel a deep seeded need to crack all 24 levels of Desktop Tower Defence and, as of the last three days, I have a blog to maintain. I also feel like I need to be relaxing... like this is a holiday that I should be enjoying. I refuse to turn on the television during the day and I am determinedly productive, yet the days are slipping from me and I am not wiser, fitter, nor do I feel like I have just been having a wonderful break from the daily grind.

I can draw only one conclusion: i have wasted this time on petty tasks that have kept me occupied rather than satisfied, and my mind and perhaps soul have suffered for it. The only solution is to go back to work.

Unfortunately, if I am working, there will be no time to cook, see friends, go for long walks, read important literature and sleep in ... and oh boy, I could really use some time for those things!