I've got a pretty obnoxious cold at the moment, the kind that makes it hard to interface with the world because you're either stuck with that perpetual painfully-about-to-sneeze-face or sticking wads of tusk-like tissues up your nose and groaning like a snotty walrus.
My partner in inertia, who also seems to have the snifflies this morning
One of the silver linings of this head full of gunk is the guilt-free rest period. I kind of worship guilt-free rest. I'm grateful to live a life that has room for it and, as far as I can tell, I offer it to myself more often than a large amount of the frenetic, fast-paced culture I live in. In fact, I've always kind of been in love with those times in the day when there's nothing that has to be done. Those moments on those awesome evenings when the items that are left on your to-do list are more-or-less optional. Car commutes when you physically cannot move your body in productive ways so you can instead absorb a podcast or sing songs in whatever vocal style suits you (I love being Sara Bareilles or Hozier for a few songs in a row). Minutes of waiting room time when you can gulp down a few more pages of a book.
Full disclosure, I have a very flexible worked schedule, I don't have any children, and I just (like in the last two weeks) exited a three-year relationship that, for reasons both universal and specific, took most of my energy to maintain. I am finding myself with TIME, with that question that poet Mary Oliver put so beautifully, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?". And the truth is that right now I am having that internal battle between building myself a new, independent, necessary amount of structure (you know, regular sleep times and healthy meals and exercise and life-organizing, goal-shaped stuff) and reveling in the way that the doors of my life have just been flung open and I can run into the hills all Sound of Music-style and forget my responsibilities and routines.
Routine and Leisure and I have quite the love triangle. I fall for Routine when life gets out of hand and I'm looking for a rescuer, a partner with a backbone and sincerity and good intentions and principles to hang his hat on. But boy does he bore me sometimes, taking quite a bit of my energy and not always giving me those in-the-moment assurances that the actions I'm putting my energy into are worthwhile. Cook a healthy breakfast, he says, encouragingly when we're having a good week and demandingly when we're going through a rough patch. Wake up the same time every day, go to the gym, stay away from dairy - sleep, diet, exercise, sleep, diet, exercise, he reminds me paternally, paternalistically, insufferably sometimes. And when I agree, comply, he cheerfully says, You see?? Don't you feel great?? I want to hug him and punch him and thank him and do a good old-fashioned eyeball roll all at the same time.
Leisure is sexy in that way that you can't get enough of ... for the first two days. You deserve this, he assures you when you sleep in on the weekends, when you stay up late watching YouTube videos and adding to your wishlist on Etsy. He knows how to curl around you and purr like a cat, affectionate and at-ease. We can do whatever we want, he reminds me. We make the rules. It OUR life. Eventually he gets insufferable too. He doesn't help you with the monotonous daily tasks and you can only watch TV on the couch with him for so many hours before your brain and your ass hurt from all the doing nothing. He talks a lot about freedom and possibility but not so much about who's going to pay the rent and make the phone calls and work the hours to put all that possibility to good use.
I resent them both sometimes, but the thing is, I think they're both loving dudes deep down. Routine really wants to see me shine and thrive. He knows the confidence and deep, solid wisdom that comes from hard work and setting goals so that you can then achieve them. Leisure loves to see my joy and hear me sing and watch as the adrenaline and cortisol drain from my body at the end of the day. Leisure just wants to be hugged and snuggled and adored, like a puppy. He knows the effortless warmth of smiles and affection.
They BOTH adore my friends and like spending time with them. Sometimes Routine is a little whiny, reminding me that we have other things to do, and sometimes Leisure is feeling reeeeeally lazy and hates the idea of having to put on pants and make our hair presentable. But on the drive home from meeting a friend at coffee, they are both quiet and smiling, nodding their heads, glad and grateful for the gift of companions and connection. It never truly feels like wasted time and it never feels like too much effort. This is why we are starting to figure out that we want to tell our stories and share our passion for connection with the wider world. It's something, we agree, that fills us all.
Mmm, autumn hikes, another activity we can all agree on
Every once in a while, I kind of get the idea in my head that maybe the three of us can be one happy family, that Routine and Leisure can get along. I mean, they do share SOME of the same interests, right? They're both into reading (Routine wants something useful to read, maybe some social justice oriented non-fiction or a clean-eating cookbook. Leisure prefers adventure memoirs or horror stories or supernatural teen romances). We all definitely enjoy doing the New York Times crossword puzzle in the mornings with our coffee (although even together we've never been able to complete a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday puzzle without calling in back-up from friends). Routine acquiesces to those podcasts in the car (realizing that we can't do anything else anyway) and then realizes he actually feels like he got a brain workout from it. Leisure always drags in getting ready to go to the gym, but he's pretty damn enamored with Zumba.
This is perhaps a silly exercise in trying to understand myself, and I KNOW how obnoxious it must be to read about someone pondering their romance with leisure time, especially if you have much less of it than you would wish (#firstworldproblems, amIright?). And my habits need not be compared to men, nor do I think any person - male, female, both, or neither - is as one or two-dimensional as my internal caricatures. I just have this romantic sensibility that inclines me to use characters and relationships as metaphorical stand-ins for all of the other things I am in love with in life. And I'm in love with quite a lot of things, so it kind of makes it sound/feel like I'm polyamorous. Which love(s) do I follow? What is it I plan to do with my one wild and precious life?
This blog is one of the ways that I plan to both ask and answer those questions. For now I will snort and sniffle and love the peach tea I am comforting myself with and the soft tissue tusks hanging out of my nose and feel gratitude for the time and space to type these little words into existence using a free service in a small corner of the internet.
Happy weekend!
I love this. I have the same love triangle, especially on the weekends.
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