the quality of the pancakes

No Time For That Now, The Computer’s Starting

I remember the time in-between time. That glorious, glowing free time that manifested itself between projects, classes, train stops, and seasons. I would find myself with an unplanned and unstructured block of minutes with which to think and do whatever came to mind - which was often nothing at all*.

In college, I knew fewer people, had less money, and wanted more (material) things. It wasn’t all bacon and high-fives, but I was rarely stressed or worried about anything of great import. My grades were good, I could feed, clothe, and house myself, and was working my way towards, uh…a college degree, I suppose. It didn’t really matter. What mattered is that, without even thinking about it, I was living an unfocused, open-ended, steadily progressing, and largely fulfilling life - the kind of life that now seems not only embarrassing but also a tad impossible.

Today, those in-between times are a distant memory. Gone the way of the buffalo. Banished to the land of wind and ghosts. Shit-canned. Today, free time must be scheduled. Which, of course, ruins it almost entirely.

Okay kids, get out your pencils. We’re all going to be creative in 5, 4, 3…

The manufactured taste of the freedom achieved by actively deciding to turn off my cell phone and shut down my email client isn’t nearly as sweet or nutrient-rich as the organic freedom of forgetting those doors even exist.

Maybe what’s wrong with our current point of technological/sociological evolution is that we keep adding entrances to our lives. I’m not an engineer or an architect or anything, but I would wager a house built primarily of doors wouldn’t win any awards for stability.

There’s a neurotic, overly analytic nature to choosing free time that shows its true fangs only when not necessitated by a goal. It’s easy to lock myself away if warranted by an activity - usually, and obviously, work. But freedom from distractions to a specific and defined end is hardly the spice of life. It may be how “things get done”, but inspired and original thoughts aren’t exactly gushing from that fountain.

Deciding to have free time for no explicit purpose, reasoning yourself away from practical concentration - I mean, isn’t that defeating the purpose? The problem is, with new stimulants (both legitimate and not) lining up for a piece of your attention, aside from closing your eyes and putting your fingers in your ears, what choice do you have? You can choose to pursue, not pursue, or stay ignorant of the stimulants around you. If you weren’t aware you’ve been making this choice, I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you. Welcome to the downward spiral of the self-aware. There will be cake.

I want to believe it’s still possible for someone with an iPhone, a Facebook account, a TiVo, interesting friends, literary, cinematic, musical, and/or cultural interests to organically produce free time. I want to believe you can simultaneously know those choices and be able to release those choices to such a degree that you forget they exist.

I want to believe those things, but I don’t. We’ll continue to move forward and adapt, but I don’t believe we’ll recapture the free time that was. Maybe in little sects or cults or something, but not on a large scale.

I suspect this problem is specific to the generations that knew life before constant connectivity, and will become a reasonably documented relic as I/we/they die off. This is sad, but probably only to the/my ego.

In the mean time, we can take comfort in the fact that the solutions we find will almost instantly become anachronisms - which is kind of cool if you think about it.

*It’s funny to think that doing nothing used to be an option. Today it sounds wasteful and ungrateful - like the spiteful act of a petulant child, or how a burn-out stoner might live.