secretly attentive

it seems the age-old debate about time rages on unabated. whatever i am doing with my time, whether it be working, volunteering or laying about, isn't what i would be doing (i tell myself) if i had just a bit more time. i would be creating, i think to myself. i would write music columns, sew funky clothes, make large pots of stew, pull back the carpet in my room and finish the hardwood underneath, build that little drainage canal in the front yard (because the sidewalk has a low spot, and changing it would require bringing out the jackhammer again).

it doesn't matter, how much time i have. it doesn't matter, but i mind. my stomach twists with anxiety. i feel myself giving in to the slide, the inevitable slide of personal affairs into the petty and pitiable state common to miserable people.

even as i worry, i do stop to giggle about how far out of the range of normal some of my behaviour is, and how i'm probably not in much danger of becoming a hollow reproduction of a free person. my houseplants have dreads in them. i create art. i dumpster-dive. i suppose dorking out isn't as rare as it once was, but i do like to wander around font websites, make endless themed playlists on itunes and mentally re-plan the city's transportation networks to be more pedestrian-friendly. in my spare time. which explains a bit about the time-scarcity: how much gets lost in the tunnels of my imagination?

but i think that the imagining is more than seems. i think i relax in that kind of a blank, 'mindless' space, and process the shit that happens to me. without having to analyse it, reason it out? maybe. or without needing a conscious point to all the pondering.

the worry, though. that's probably pretty useless. it might not be, if i could predict the future. but since i don't...