How to Fritter Your Life Away in One Easy Step

Step 1: Find a hobby that really interests you. To the point of overdoing it. Never be bored or feel unproductive again. End.

I admit, I've had those moments I hear about from others. The ones that go something like, "I don't know what I would ever do with myself if/when I retire!" Right. Sure, after my 10 hours of sleep, sometimes I have those thoughts too, but they are the product of shear slovenliness and lack of energy. Those who share my occasional weakness in this area are never the types to say that kind of treacle. As if continuing to be another corporate plow horse for decades was some sort of personally productive virtue. Those are folks who really need a hobby or two. I have more hobbies than you can shake a stick at, as some of you probably do. Practice across several musical instruments by itself could kill each and every day while I slowly sat myself into Attila the Blob. But I'd be killing it at the jam session. I'd just need someone to wheel me there and back. But it would sure suck up the rest of each day!

No, mine is a motivational issue (I'm guessing I have some company, gauging by commentary "out there"). My one virtue is that I tend towards obsession in certain areas. Obsession tends to burn the ever-dwindling hours of each day that I am not required by economic reality to roll back and forth in my corporate hamster ball. My mom calls it frittering the day away. While an amusing term, it implies the activity is somehow trivial or lacks substance. Spending all day on social media would be in that vein. But mastering a new reel on the mandolin or working towards not embarrassing yourself when the bluegrass break comes your way is absolutely not. Is it a skill to master social media? Perhaps if you are 80. But, if you are 80, I'd say that even starting a musical instrument is a good productive hobby to commence. Plenty to fill the gaps in the swirl of all that is music. Obviously a good read always makes a nice filler, if not productive in quite the same way. But unless you struggle with reading, well, productivity is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

This brings us to the beholder. Ever notice that when you are obsessed with something, most others tend not to be? And you tend to blab on about your obsession until you see the tell-tale TEGO in your victims face (Their Eyes Glaze Over)? That's why we have to have Meetups and clubs and societies and what-not. So we don't bore our loved ones and coworkers to death, with talk about things that make life worth living for us. For those with abundant hobbies, the likelihood that your significant other is going to have a similar love of this pastime is vanishingly slim. That is why the lingering 50's idea of couple togetherness is full of crap. Sure, because you had kids to raise together. Or she did. Well, see! Even then it was a bunch of crap because even raising the kids wasn't really a shared task. It was more like a diversified business venture. Dad had his three-martini lunches and business meetings at the club while Mom wrangled the little monsters at home and maybe played bridge with the girls once a week. Or maybe it was the 70's and there were some equal opportunity ennui complete with latch key kids and economic stress. Then they wondered why they didn't really know each other after twenty years. Feminine mystique...mother's little helpers...Alice's pills... Is drinking together a hobby? But are there beer pong clubs for those over 80? I dunno. Maybe. But I'd call that a classic failure of the imagination. Plus it seems like the endurance would be a killer. A little weed enjoying the Great Outdoors in some forest seems like a wiser choice. Camping! Now there's a pastime that can really make the day fly.

Sure is hard to break all that cultural programming of togetherness though, isn't it? The standard was (still?) that one or both of you was bored to tears, made a bunch of sexist comments about whoever was getting their preferred extra curriculars and why, while the Pyrrhic victor shot eyeball darts to make sure the fun was being ruined...suspension of disbelief gone. And...scene! Good clean fun all around. And that, my friends, besides growing economic independence for women, is why the biggest growth demographic is single person households. All that forced romantic togetherness trying to come up with mutual obsessions just killed the drill.

Oh, cynic, I hear you cry! Your relationship is different. Sure. And a whole percentage of the American populace also thinks they have been abducted by aliens. I'm not saying it can't happen. Just come back and talk to me after 20 years. Tell me about your shared hobbies. The ones you obsess over. And no, your porn collection or cats don't count. I'm sure they are both lovely and give you lots of joy, but they don't tend to be a shared passion. Except at the club level. If you are one of those lucky souls, I say again: come back and talk to me in 20 years. Some things are just experiences that don't lend themselves to sharing. Or maybe I'm just a boring translator. Could be. Or maybe you are. Or maybe we were just never meant to be together because you love watching men's sports and the Transformers, and I love playing my banjo and jamming with anyone who will have me. Don't feel bad. It's not you, it's me.

Here's the view I'd rather be enjoying right now.

Work

So, I tried to phone blog today from work, but this time, it didn't want to connect up to the blog like it had before. Lots of glitches on this site! Whadya want for free, right?

So, instead, an after-the-fact, instead of a blow-by-blow boredom moment. Is that less relevant, less "of the moment"? I dunno. Certainly less timely. I'm still working on the gadgetry, afterall. But after a lot of tedious typing into the phone, I discovered a 435 character limite and a service glitch. Nice. Made the day's boredom almost exciting as the new ground covered.

Long day, even if it was only two hours OT. At least the OT was fun, on-rope practise to keep in touch with my inner SPRAT cert. But then into the regular day, which was the usual. Better than yesterday, which felt like a real half-brain, two cell day. But, after more than four years of the same show, the threads (mental, that is) are showing. My techniques for avoiding utter brain-numbing madness: Humor where I can find it (sometimes difficult due to the unwavering bitterness/grumping of a certain crew member), attention to detail (no gelling out--it's just not safe...or smart), tons of "what-if" scenarios to get any possible contingencies into the brain continuum, watching for anything out of the ordinary on stage (ya never know: live theater), my exercise interval (about ten minutes during the show when there is nothing to do but drool or get gig butt and end up doing the former "gelling" routine--again, not wise), creative thinking about numbers, like contemplating the following news item: Ford CEO paid 28 million American dollars for 4 months of work, while Ford simultaneously plans to let, oh, about 30,000 employees go. Belt tightening of course. But not for certain overvalued individuals, of course. Oh, and the $28 million was not his entire compensation, btw. The usual. Chump change in comparison with the total for the workers fired. But, hey. Why can't they ever start with Joe Overcompensated for the Job Who Could, With One Paycheck Retire and Never Work Again?? I just don't get it. I wish I had copied the poppycock PR sentence the company/board used to justify this guy's salary, too. Utter Dilbertian nonsense. One of the many things that signals that this civilization is going down, as I like to say. Hello late Roman Empire. My little watch calculator came up with an error message, the number was so big on the lost worker wages (AKA "savings for the company"). If you just did a ballpark figure of 40K per worker (pulled straight outa thin air, in case you wondered), multiplied by 30,000 of them, probably a really low number, I'm thinking, that'd give you a cool 1.2 BILLION in savings. What could you possibly be doing wrong with your company that you went "whoopsie! gotta ditch a lotta personnel!"?!

Goin' down with help from Ford Motor Company. And not in the good way, either.

Especially hard to swallow (over and over again...just cruise the business section on a given day, if you dare) when study after study shows that CEO compensation has zilch to do with actual performance or company stock performance. Nice. I'll try and remember that the next time I hear another corporate monster declare how tough the economy is and how much it costs to offer affordable health care to its workers (you know, the ones who actually do the majority of work every day).

So I guess that makes another way to avoid boredom on the job: get disgusted by the latest news headline. Does take energy. Probably burns a few more calories of indignation too. That's always sorta fun, if not overdone. Don't want to hasten an overuse injury. It would be so easy, depending upon the day. And that story was a bonus, 'cause I didn't get more than a couple headlines into the CNN list before my little calculator was buzzing and error-coding. Yes, I admit that I was lazy and didn't just add the zeros together in my head. Hey! I'm trying to do a show here too, ya know! OK, so I didn't get much into my exercise interval, what with all the righteous indignation going on in my head.

How did this post begin? Daily grind. Avoiding boredom and danger (AKA mistakes). I'm sure this will be a continuing thread, since it is so very near the surface so often. I've been good, better than the vast majority, but even my mighty powers cannot overpower the stultifying power (is that an oxymoron?) of monotony. Ups and downs and the search for something new, something progressive, something positive, something that will give an extra laugh to the day without completely flinging away the last shreds of professionalism left. Or at least not carelessly so. It's touch and go at times, I admit. But I think it's in the company's interest to have a minimum of long brewing insanity cropping up, don't you? It's nice to be in accord, isn't it? We already know we can't all get along, but it doesn't have to be morose while we're at it, does it?

All you folkies out there, sing along: ...to the bottom of the...husbands and wives, little children lost their lives, oh, it was sad when that great ship went down... Great lyrics.