Time Is Wasted on Me
Being unemployed has filled me with shame. Not in a capitalist sense — which is what I spent all last year battling and have finally come to a sort of flimsy peace with — but because of all the desperate wishes of my peers and those I follow online who are highly intelligent and creative, all of whom are increasingly more at odds with their forced lived experiences; being made to grapple with the idea that they could be doing so much more that resonates with their spiritual needs if only they didn’t need money to survive. My timeline is dotted with dreams of a life spent sans a meaningless and often ethically damaging day job, as well as musings over how active their creative life could be without it. These are people who still somehow manage to keep at their hobbies and passions as best they can to the degree of middling happiness, if not moderate success, while also staying afloat occupationally.
Hearing this spiritual turmoil, I can’t help but reflect on my own lived experience these past few years. I’m financially supported by my partner, and while I do occasionally take on tasks that fall more squarely in the realm of work and less so play, I generally spend my time largely doing nothing. I’m constantly aware of the fact that, given the dream life people are yearning for, I squander it.
I have a laundry list of hobbies and skills I want to learn, as well as books to read, topics to research, and causes to support, and I have nothing but time to take it all on. And yet, I do nothing. My days are spent sleeping in late, shuffling to the chair in front of the tv to drink my coffee and play a video game until it’s time to eat, and then I return to the video game or otherwise hound around on social media uselessly until it’s time for bed.
Eventually I’m forced to ask myself: Is the issue really motivation? Is it really depression? Or have the things I’ve been interested in merely been a carefully curated list of what could bring me the most clout in any given arena? Is the issue that I’m actually vastly uninteresting, and so largely lacking true intent or drive to take on any of these creative or intellectual endeavors? I know myself well enough to know that when I genuinely want to do something, or am genuinely interested, I will act on it. The lack of action when anyone else would act with fanfare speaks volumes. Maybe I am just a true hedonist and ultimately not the wide-eyed creative intellectual I’ve always somewhat prided myself on being.
So when I hear the laments of those around me who are whittling their humanity away at an office job while being made to wonder how much better and purer a life they could lead — and humanity could lead — if they weren’t bound to capitalism in such a way, yearning for any means to live the creative and interconnected life they know is at the heart of life … I know that, when given the gift of time they all dream of, I prove a wasted recipient.
