Monday, June 14, 2004
What a Difference Four Days Make
Working a nine-to-five job undeniably has its advantages (an amazing range of highlighter color options and unfettered access to copiers come to mind), but flexibility is not one of them. Employment, I have sadly discovered, generally requires a person to remain in a designated location for some eight hours a day, and that location is seldom a video arcade or ice cream parlor. In fact, unless you work in a grade school or a prison, your labor is pretty much expected to be uninterrupted, without the benefit of breaks to play foursquare or shank your cellmate. So although the delights of my four-day weekend were many, the realization that there was nothing, in fact, that I was required to do was chief among them. I largely filled my time with necessary but oft-neglected tasks like arguing with the cable company, cleaning the toothpaste specks off the bathroom mirror, and watching VH1's Best Week Ever.
Of course, it wasn’t all just assorted housewifery. Thanks to weather that actually approximated what it’s like to dwell in a climate that supports life, I got out to the Old Town Art Fair and some of my friends’ art fair parties. Although I couldn’t help but notice that the Fair has become more and more about hot pretzels, beer, and yuppies with puppies than about, er, art, and I had to leave my credit card at home to avoid amassing third-world-country-level debt solely through the purchase of unbelievably well-composed natural light landscape photographs, I had a great time. The four semesters of art history instruction felt somehow less than completely useless, and one of my friends talked to one of the artists for so long that the artist gave him a free photograph, along with an understanding of what it means to experience true social awkwardness. So what if I sunburned my feet and caught a fairgoer peeing against the side of my apartment building? I landed me some kulture, with a kapital “k.”
But the lamest joy I experienced all weekend had to be last night, when I walked down to the park around sunset and just enjoyed the feeling of wandering around on a beautiful night with no obligations except the possibility of catching a rerun of Arrested Development at 8:30. I slipped off my flip-flops and felt, for the first time in months, the soft green grass against the soles of my feet, only briefly considering the probability of contracting tetanus. I looked out at the lake, whimsically sparkling all pink and blue in the waning light, and thought, yes, this is where I’m supposed to be right now, and this is what humans are supposed to do—experience life with all the complicated levels of feeling and intellect the higher power gave us. And that I did. And then I went home and packed up my PBJ for another exciting work week.
Working a nine-to-five job undeniably has its advantages (an amazing range of highlighter color options and unfettered access to copiers come to mind), but flexibility is not one of them. Employment, I have sadly discovered, generally requires a person to remain in a designated location for some eight hours a day, and that location is seldom a video arcade or ice cream parlor. In fact, unless you work in a grade school or a prison, your labor is pretty much expected to be uninterrupted, without the benefit of breaks to play foursquare or shank your cellmate. So although the delights of my four-day weekend were many, the realization that there was nothing, in fact, that I was required to do was chief among them. I largely filled my time with necessary but oft-neglected tasks like arguing with the cable company, cleaning the toothpaste specks off the bathroom mirror, and watching VH1's Best Week Ever.
Of course, it wasn’t all just assorted housewifery. Thanks to weather that actually approximated what it’s like to dwell in a climate that supports life, I got out to the Old Town Art Fair and some of my friends’ art fair parties. Although I couldn’t help but notice that the Fair has become more and more about hot pretzels, beer, and yuppies with puppies than about, er, art, and I had to leave my credit card at home to avoid amassing third-world-country-level debt solely through the purchase of unbelievably well-composed natural light landscape photographs, I had a great time. The four semesters of art history instruction felt somehow less than completely useless, and one of my friends talked to one of the artists for so long that the artist gave him a free photograph, along with an understanding of what it means to experience true social awkwardness. So what if I sunburned my feet and caught a fairgoer peeing against the side of my apartment building? I landed me some kulture, with a kapital “k.”
But the lamest joy I experienced all weekend had to be last night, when I walked down to the park around sunset and just enjoyed the feeling of wandering around on a beautiful night with no obligations except the possibility of catching a rerun of Arrested Development at 8:30. I slipped off my flip-flops and felt, for the first time in months, the soft green grass against the soles of my feet, only briefly considering the probability of contracting tetanus. I looked out at the lake, whimsically sparkling all pink and blue in the waning light, and thought, yes, this is where I’m supposed to be right now, and this is what humans are supposed to do—experience life with all the complicated levels of feeling and intellect the higher power gave us. And that I did. And then I went home and packed up my PBJ for another exciting work week.
