When I was a freshman at UC San Diego, there was this building that faced the dorms where I lived. Click here to see pics. Large neon letters lit up the seven vices and virtues. I would be reading on the couch, staring out at “Fortitude” and “Sloth”. Sometimes those words echo through my head. I find it hard to relax and do nothing….
One time, when we were 19, my twin sister, who is at the moment 36 years old and the mother of a two-year-old, made this joke that her favorite hobbies were eating and sleeping. “I’m a lazy glutton,” she gleefully remarked, adding, “If i had it my way, I would walk around with a refrigerator and a bed tied to my back, so I could eat and sleep whenever I wanted to.” I can totally relate! I want to sleep! I am bad sometimes and stay awake late into the night and surf the net and troll Facebook, etc. I also spend a great deal of time reading books, planning for tomorrow and the week, my life, etc. I make endless to-do lists and actually accomplish most of the items on them. I drink coffee steadily throughout the day as a reward for getting things done. When I go to bed at night, I actually go to sleep dreaming of the next cup of coffee I will have in the morning as I begin the ambitious set of tasks and goals I have for myself.
I want fortitude and industry, but I do sometimes find myself in the land of sloth! During vacations I try to do, as one of my cousins (a schoolteacher and librarian) said, “Serious loafing”.
I love to sleep, but I’m also a hard worker. Hard work is a good thing. So is relaxation. How can one person be such a contradiction?
Maybe it has to do with the pressure of the American Work Ethic. It also has to do with the nature of our personalities. I’ve always been the type of person, where once I’ve completed one challenge, I’m looking for another one to take on.
Things I like to do to loaf include the following “guilty pleasures”:
1. Watching endless YouTube videos from the 80′s. When I was procrastinating on my dissertation, I turned this searching-for-new-wave music videos into an art form. At one point, I even hooked up my own personal LCD projector and displayed them all gigantic on a large wall in my condo and plugged the music through the BOSE surround sound. It was like a party of 1 and I was the DJ!
2. Lifetime Movie Marathons. I think I’ve seen all these movies about five times each.
3. Facebook! Endlessly distracting….
Hard work
I also do work hard. I work best in bursts, but I also work at all hours, as well. I am doing a lot of writing these days–writing research manuscripts to submit to academic research journals, writing grants, writing email communications, writing personal things, etc. etc. What I like about writing is when I get started and I get “on a roll”. Like I said, one thing I rely on to work, is the whole idea of MOMENTUM. Sometimes, the hardest part is getting started. I am also inspired by the “giants” in our field of literacy. When I was at Harvard doing the Chall grant research, I was inspired by the collection and writings of Jeanne Chall. That got me motivated. I also get motivated when I can break down a task into do-able steps. The grant writing has “paid off”–literally. The manuscript writing needs to be ramped up a lot more. Those are my goals and dreams!
My goal is to have a healthy mix of hard work and relaxation. I think having a structured schedule helps.
BUT, life is not just a series of tasks to be done, although it is that, too!
Life is about getting all you can out of it. Like Marcus Aurelius said, “Live each day as if it were your last.” Sometimes the road gets bumpy-nobody and nothing is ideal. Sometimes we are alone–or seemingly alone, but we aren’t ever. There are always others who are thinking of us and who care. Things don’t always go the way we want. That’s why we have hope and faith in the present and the future. The present is all we have. A great book I read a while back is “Gray is the Color of Hope” by Irina Ratushinskaya. She is a poet who was forced into political exile in Siberia. She maintains hope despite her harsh and bitter and absurd circumstances. She doesn’t hate, she sees the good in people. As impersonal and alienating as the world was, she wrote poetry in bars of soap. She never gives in to feeling sorry for herself.
I’ve always loved to think about life–why are we here, what is essentially important about life and what truths are out there, and what is the universe all about. Even studying philosophy for five+ years as an undergraduate didn’t give me any instant answers. What was helpful about philosophy was ethics, or, thinking about how should one live one’s life day-to-day. I think the answer to that is we are here to help each other and care for each other. I’m still thinking on this one.
Life is a marathon–it requires stamina and one is often on one’s own, with friends who offer cups of water along the way (if you are so lucky!), so to speak. My life right now has been turning outward to help others: students, children, parents, other people.
Oh yeah, life is also about having fun and finding oneself!
Max was part of the house, too! He greeted me when I returned home.
