Let your Friday be lazy

We have to mark the passage of time somehow

As we age our interests narrow. You stop exploring and study details. Humans go from wanderers to watchmakers, I’m pretty sure. We specialize.

Maybe that once automatically transformed you into a valued elder. People still exist who could at a glance describe the names and qualities of all their region’s plants. Most Americans, I’m told, can from the logo identify hundreds of brands. Survival in the modern workplace may not always develop skills society (and its market) values.

You can grow old and refine the most efficient ways to run a construction project, a skill worth money until you retire. Or you perfect ways to navigate the byzantine politics of an office that you’ll leave behind. Or get really good at software that’s about to go obsolete. Some people specialize in obscure workings of national politics as seen on tv. (This fate glances side-eye at me, raises a lazy eyebrow.) Specialization for no man’s benefit is the primal appeal of birdwatching.

We always grow, except now we grow in intricacy. Habits may look repetitive to the young. But they’re the slow, daily practice of perfecting something, even if it’s something silly as the morning coffee.

Which is a problem, because my system doesn’t need perfecting, it needs uprooting.

My attention span…went a little loose today. I managed to start the morning with some jump lunges in the living room. I dragged myself to my laptop. We battled. I learned a lot about coronavirus statistics. 

The house picks up each other’s moods. One guy cracks a beer and fires up Counterstrike and we all howl in unison. It’s like a sorority at full moon. The romantic in me likes to think moods are contagious through the whole city. Today, people were antsy. I finally have all the parts to assemble my rain barrels. I bounced around my room and left barrels piled in the garage.

“I’m learning not to fight myself,” a friend writes. To me she means there will always be another distraction. Quit Twitter and fall into blogs, quit the internet and examine the comic books. You can’t just avoid your avoidance technique. You have to actively choose your task. The hardest work goes unnoticed in the depths of play.  

All these things sound trite. They’re discoveries we’ve all made before, observations you could have told my young self and he’d roll his eyes and say, “I know!” But if he really knew, would I be here? Cliches pile up like variations on a theme, but what if instead of repetitions they’re refinements? What if we’re not caught in self-destructive loops, but slow, redemptive slogs?

I’m trying to be optimistic by envisioning work-from-home productivity as Dante’s Purgatorio, so you can see how this day’s gone.

My only goal left is to send this small newsletter. So I leave you with this: today, you are absolved from productivity. Productivity is banned. It’s Friday. Waste it decadently.