I've been thinking about what exactly to post next. The initial trauma of the job loss has subsided and I've been able to settle into a fairly regular routine. In the week after my return to Chicago from Madison, I allowed myself to slide into a semi-debauched lifestyle. Friends visited from NYC and Wisconsin, there was much beer drank and many brunches languidly muddled through. It was fun, a lot of fun actually, I very much like the city and without a job, I'm free to prattle around all day and drink all night. But that week wore me out completely. When I saw my friend off on her way back to NYC I decided that I had to watch my booze intake for fear of developing a habit, plus to say I felt physically, like absolute garbage wouldn't be an exaggeration. I knew I needed to develop a new routine, something that's easy for me to do when I have the structure of a nine-to-five but less so when my day is utterly blank. And herein is the theme of this essay: the development of new habits and routines; the development of even the most cursory scaffolding of a day and the development of the self discipline to get out of bed for no other reason than to stop sleeping.
The day after my friends had left town was very hot. I woke up late and as I sat in the dense humidity of my living room I found myself staring at my roommate's dog, Otto. Otto was panting, lying immobile in a moat of sunlight on the floor. As I looked at the dog with his pitbull grin of vague satisfaction, I realized that my daily life was quickly becoming the same as his and that he was reflecting my lassitude back at me. I too sat, similarly inert, sweating on the couch, playing Call of Duty, sipping McDonald's 1$ coffee and felt that this was what meant to be unemployed. Not having a job means long stretches of boredom and emptiness punctuated by brief and painful moments of panic and ennui. I thought to myself as I turned off my Xbox that the most important thing to do is find reasons not to drink too much though there really isn't any reason why you can't go ahead and burn another day in a hungover torpor.
Drinking is the constant temptation, supreme luxury and worst enemy. In concert with sleep it has the potential to sap days away from you with startling efficiency. It's that temptation that I buttress myself against while reminding myself that comfort can be a form of depression.
I have come to realize that in each day, there are two potential options: I can either not drink and though my days are not exactly regular, fall into a rough rhythm that is at least nominally productive, or drink, hang out, and recover (which is socially productive in its own right and fun, but also dangerous). The following is a cursory description of what those days look like (I hope it isn't painfully dull to those reading).
My days usually start with Otto waking me up at around nine by flopping into my bed with me. There we stay until about eleven or noon at which point, we rise and I make a light breakfast some of which I share with the dog. After that we usually lounge in the house, I play video-games (Call of Duty is an onerous addiction) and Otto sits on the front porch and sunbathes. Around three I go for a jog and Otto is picked up by a friend of mine who's also currently unemployed for his daily walk and socializing session (Otto is quite the gregarious hound). At half past four I eat again, if Otto has returned, he eats as well. I shower (sans dog) and then make my way to a cafe near my house to work on blog stuff or the few freelance projects that have filtered down to me from my ex-employer. I stop working around ten, return home, eat again. This is where I hit the crucial fork in my day, one that really determines how my following day will be conducted. I will either avoid drinking, do basic upkeep stuff -- my laundry, clean my room or do dishes -- the night will wind down, I'll go to bed at about three, do some reading then sleep. In these days I am reminded of the main character in Murakami's Wind Up Bird Chronicle whose wife leaves the house everyday for her job, leaving him in a sun-filled and empty home where he takes great joy in doing banal chores like making pasta and ironing his shirts while musing about how his cat spends its days. The other road in the fork prevails if my roommates in service are hanging out or if I'd made a date with someone. If they are drinking or I am otherwise going out to get drinks, I will most likely end up drinking too much since I'm free of morning commitments. I will not go to bed until four and consider myself responsible for drinking a glass of water and brushing my teeth before I hit the sheets. This prong naturally costs me a good portion of my following day, I may not get out of bed until two, spend my day in a pair of athletic shorts and watch the entire new season of Game of Thrones in a single sitting (which is how I employed my day yesterday).
But the days in which I party are in a way, less interesting in terms of the unemployed lifestyle. I am a 24-year-old man without any real responsibility and just enough money coming in to get blotto on a six-pack of tallboys any time I want. Of course I do what anyone else in that situation would do and is a common not just to people who are unemployed but also underemployed. What's more strange and interesting is the sense of letting your body basically determine what you do and at what time you do it (excluding, again days lost to hangovers). You wake up when you feel like it, work when you feel like it, eat when you feel like it and go to bed when you feel like it. My days all last roughly the same number of hours but those hours can be anything from ten in the morning until one at night to one in the afternoon until four in the morning. I'm currently writing this at nine in the evening as I find my productive hours are usually crepuscular and nocturnal. A schedule where I can be awake until four and sleep until one fits me far better than one in which I have to be up at 7:30 AM and in bed by midnight. Time is surprisingly liquid in that way.
I've read about a Frenchman that lived in a cave completely devoid of natural light, external sound or clocks in order to find out what a human's natural circadian rhythm was. After his weeks spent subterranean he concluded that he had been sleeping for some outrageous portion of his day, around 14 hours. I feel like I am that man. I have no responsibility to be anywhere or do anything and the strongest determining factor in how I spend my day, when I do what I do, is my body.
I would say the feeling is a good one. I'm my own boss and my time is as valuable as I make it. I feel good when I do things I see as valuable, I feel bad when I treat my day like it's worthless. Depression and immobility is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you think your day is worthless, it is, and as I wrote in my last post, what is a person but their days stacking up, one on top of another?
