When I was in college, I had so much free time that I used to laugh and scoff at the notion of the 9-5 stereotypical television character life. I couldn't believe people would stand for such drudgery. I was working as a waiter, 3 days a week, 5 hour shifts, making more than enough money to pay rent and have fun. I even saved money and had numerous hobbies. School was mostly part-time and, having made hobbies of each subject many quarters before taking the courses, school was a breeze. It was easier than working. I could go into class dazed and sleepy, keeping my head in dreamspace all day. Nobody cared.
My favorite hobby was, and always will be, to dream. Sleep was a given. I would sleep 10-12 hours a night, awakening in a slow daze that would allow me to remember epic dreams. Some of them I would write down, parts anyway, but I would always stop short of a full dream log, lest I spend all day writing and remembering, living in the memory of a dream.
Now, even unemployed, I'm working almost 60 hours a week. One full-time job for a decent pay became a full-time job of looking for work, committing to a 20-hour a week startup on nights and weekends, pending pay on project completion and revenue share, doing countless freelance jobs, all of it equating to more time working, less work getting done and less pay as a result. But if the moonlighting startup succeeds, we'll have it made. That might be retirement in a year. We'll see.
I've been unemployed for over two weeks and although I've stolen time away from promised availability and auctioned interview time to walk around the lake and join in story time with my beautiful wife and daughter, I'm so beaten by the lack of free personal time that I can't enjoy it fully. I love the brief moments I can just hold my baby girl, even when she is sleeping. I don't want to put her down. I could just hold her all night and push the rest of the world away, ignore the phone, purge my email, disconnect.
Someday, all of this work will pay off. Someday, we will be able to work only for fun. When that day comes, I'm going to be spending all my time with my baby girl, traveling the world, playing music, reading books, writing epic dreams and living them as well.
4 comments:
I can't keep up with you on the all work no time thing, but I get not nearly enough time to just sit with my daughter to enjoy who she is becoming.
Croce says it perfectly, as do you.
I realized recently (and still need to blog it) that that old line about today is the first day of the rest of your life is a bunch of crap. Toady IS my life. It's all I have. I don't have tomorrow, I don't have "some day". All you have is RIGHT NOW. Once it's gone, there will never be another one exactly like it.
Okay, you've officially shot up about 1,000 points in my book by using a Jim Croce song to drive your point home. One of the most underrated singer/songwriters ever -- his work goes far beyond (and is often better than) the handful of singles he's remembered for.
So true jemez2 and doubly true filmfather. Croce is the man.
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