What to do?

Without constant homework assignments and social activities to keep me busy, I’m thinking about the ways I can spend my time. This is a rest-of-life sort of thing. In the US we spend a lot of our time at work. What are good ways of spending our time off?

There were two guys in my basketball class last Jan term who said that they spent three hours working out every day. It was a hobby “with great benefits.”

I read a David Foster Wallace essay on television that said that, on average, Americans spend six hours a day watching the tube. Three hours of weights and cardio doesn’t seem so bad as long as it’s a substitute for six hours of TV.

I’ve broken down positive activities into some categories. If you can think of an activity that does not fit into one of these, then please add a new category. I’ve got: fixing, preserving, adding, and observing. Each of these categories can be either personal or communal.

Preserving includes all those things we do to perpetuate what’s already happening. I think we spend most of our time on this. Communal preserving is doing the dishes (if you live with other people), parenting, etc. Personal preserving is making enough money to live on, staying healthy, and keeping in touch with friends.

Fixing requires something to be broken or in the red. Communal fixing includes: saving the world, the green movement, fighting injustices, etc. Personal fixing could be weight loss, a night of heavy drinking, or doing whatever to relax or unwind.

Adding is like fixing. The difference is that fixing adds from a negative to zero, and adding starts from zero and increases. Art is generally addition. Communal adding is creating anything for other people: a meal, a painting, a piece of music, etc. Personal adding includes education, reading, and whatever else adds to your character or abilities.

Observing only applies to activities that are not for one’s own benefit. So I guess it has to be communal. You are observing when you are paying respect or noticing details because the thing has details or deserves respect. It’s reading a book because it’s beautiful – not in order to educate or amuse yourself. It’s listening in order to create space for something to be said.

I’ve listed the categories in order of appearance in life. (I really mean life after college. In college, the primary thing we spend our time doing is personal adding.)

A list of non-rhetorical questions:
Is this how it should be?
What would life look like if the order were different?
Is one category better than another? Is communal better than personal?

I’m just kicking this around today and would like to know what you think.

A Comparison Between The Bachelor and Televised Sports

I think that for a woman, the experience of watching The Bachelor might be similar to a man’s experience watching televised sports. I’ve been watching televised sports; they’re beautiful. The lush green pitch, finely toned calves, glistening spandex pants, broad shoulder pads, fluid ball movement, team together somehow acting as::: one : MIND, pace pace and slam dunk, freeze rage, and replay slo-mo replay. But while, for me, the athletes are major-league attractive, I imagine men identify with them more. I figure they must, otherwise staring at beautiful men getting physical with one another wouldn’t be the hallmark of heterosexuality.

Now The Bachelor, let’s be honest, is also a competition. The contestants want to find love sure, but damn it, what they’d really like to be are winners – I project. During Bachelor season we (my roommates and Kristina and Dani and probably some other people) see the highlighted pays: the triumphs, miseries, and extremes. We identify. We think, I could be in that game if I had a better body. We root for specific girls; we have rivals. Tenley is from Oregon so is technically our home team.

The object in play instead of being a ball has balls. Trivial distinction.

And in the end, the prize is a little gold ring instead of a big gold trophy, but it’s the same thing. The losers cry and the winners cry... if the Bachelor has a half-time show I can’t think of what it is. The difference is when the winner of the Bachelor cries we call it love. That “love” is mistaken victory; it’s hard work that has finally paid off. In the off-season players get traded, the Bachelor changes his mind or the winner gets a better contract. And we at home are not surprised and look forward to next season.

We're Wizards and We're Bored

I was watching Harry Potter 6 the other day. I’ve spent a lot of time on the couch for the past two weeks, and flying around on broomsticks, nothing but the most romantic lighting, and having a dark lord to fight looked pretty appealing. Escapism, folks: Narnia, Middle Earth, and whatever other book or TV series that makes you bummed you live in the real world. How is it that authors can create worlds that are so much more compelling than the one their readers live in? It seems like the realness – the fact that it is there – should outweigh the fantasy that glows two-dimensionally on a piece of furniture.

I listened to a Louis CK recently. Check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkusicUL2s. Plus, people and information are available to me through the Internet. It’s like some sort of legendary spring of knowledge, but I frequent only two sites and get bored.

We Westovarians put together a Life board game. We included all the typical events in life after graduation: unemployment, weight gain, marriage, winning the lottery, etc. You hit certain squares based on a dice roll. The random and deterministic qualities were bleak – and satisfying due to our post-grad fashionable jadedness. It was a little uncomfortable how easily we could map out the big events in a middle-class American’s life. Deterministic, impersonal, and bullshit. It was tough to whip out our senses of adventure.

But one square said, “Make an omelet.” I get to make breakfast almost every day for the rest of my life.

If we all lived in Harry Potter land – we’d transfigure instead of problem solve, wear robes instead of jeans, and escape from Basilisks instead of going grocery shopping – would we be excited and entertained all the time? I can’t imagine what it would be like if we were. Ron says to Harry for chapters at a time, “Holy bloody smokes Harry, we’re wizards.”

Holy bloody smokes.