Sunday, August 12, 2007

Slacker

A coworker of mine (who has quickly become my friend) has been taking a variety of classes lately on the company's dollar. The obesely large corporation we both work for (whose name shall remain a secret...until I quit) pays for your education once you've been a full time employee for one year. My friend is taking advantage of this little perk while we all still have jobs and one of my favorite things to do lately is listen to her talk about the things she's learning. Already a college graduate, this friend is taking advantage of the opportunity to enroll in classes she'd never had the time to take while pursuing her first degree, so things like Art History, Psychology and Women's Rights are now taking up most, if not all, of her time.

Her most recent assignment was to make a list of 101 things that she procrastinates doing in her life. These things do not have to be in any sort of order, rather, she was encouraged to just write them down as they came to her. Excited and curious about this project, she asked me if I'd make one up too, just to see what we could come up with. Being a chronic procrastinator myself, I, of course, procrastinated making up the list. She harassed me to just get it over with, and I complied, but I was only able to come up with 42 things. I won't bore you with the details of my totally scattered, but more than slightly fascinating list, but I did notice that starting a blog was one of the things at the top. A rather large part of me thinks that our lists are not just random, scattered thoughts, but more like our subconscious minds getting our priorities in order...I hope this isn't the case because if that's so, I've found out the hard way that I'm a terribly shallow person.

So, this is the beginning of a new outlet for me. After 30 tiring years of life gone by already, I feel the need to get my act together and do something with myself. I'm a slacker...lazy is more like it. I'm the kind of person who would rather come home from work and sack out on the couch for hours watching reruns on the Food Network, than go outside on a beautiful day and, I don't know, weed my garden (something that brings me great joy) or something else that makes me happy and keeps me active. I'm growing tired of "me" and I worry that others are too. I feel this empty hole growing inside of my soul that needs to be filled or all will be lost. How's that for anxiety?

I'm 30 years old with no kids, a bachelor's degree in fine arts, a nice house, a wonderful husband and a couple of pets, and you'd think that would be enough. Some people dream of a day where they have all the comforts in life that I've been given already. I just can't help but feel like something's missing. My friend's little procrastination assignment really got me thinking long and hard for a few days and I've made the decision to start doing those things on my list, no matter how trivial or serious. I think it would do me a world of good.

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