Dearest Rachel –
As humans, we have a surprising amount of difficulty explaining to others how we spend our time, and what exactly we do with it. Or maybe it’s just me, which basically illustrates my point. You see, even though we know, intellectually, that it’s not so, we find it hard to imagine that everybody else doesn’t go through exactly the same things we do on a daily, even on an hourly basis. Given that everything we do is the same thing as everyone else does, what’s to explain? And how do we even make it interesting for an audience, especially when we find it boring and routine?
To be sure, vast swaths of our time are, in fact, spent in activities that are universal to mankind; indeed, to most of creation. For most of us, a third of our hours are spent in sleep, completely unaware of what’s going on in the world around us, so not only is it common to us all, we don’t know what’s going on in that moment, so we couldn’t explain what goes on in that span of time even if we wanted to.
Another major chunk of our lives is taken up by eating; not so much the consumption of the food itself (and, by the way, I’ve come to the conclusion that I eat fast particularly because I prefer my food either piping hot or freezing cold, and once presented at table, neither state lasts long enough for me to linger over. And as with everything else in life, though, I tend to assume that everyone else has a similar attitude toward their food – sandwiches and the cold meats thereupon being the exception – so it’s not a conclusion worth expressing), or even the preparation (As with travel and destinations, I think of food prep as excessive if one spends more time at it than in the consumption – although that excludes bake time, where you don’t have to be hovering over the food constantly. It’s also mitigated by being prepared for multiple eaters – if each person spends half an hour eating, ten people enjoying their meal makes even five hours worth of time spent on it worthwhile, but for just myself? Eh, anything more than the same half-hour is pointless. Although I should point out that being paid for the work throws the entire calculation out the window), but rather what we do to “put food on the table” in the first place.
Granted, most of us don’t think of our careers as “putting food on the table” except in extremis; it’s usually much more ancillary than that, unless one is literal days away from starvation (and those reading over your shoulder online shouldn’t be in such a situation. If you can afford internet access – particularly the hardware, but also the service itself – you should be able to afford food, especially since it’s more important, in the final analysis). Our jobs provide the wherewithal to purchase food, sure, but there are other pressing expenses to take care of throughout our days that tend to loom larger in our consciousness.
Be that as it may, though, those jobs take up the bulk of our waking hours, for the most of us. This is how we spend our lives, and as we do, we assume that everyone else does likewise, more or less. We accept that there are those that don’t run on the same schedule as ourselves – after all, we encounter workers wherever we go, usually while we’re not at work, but either running errands or enjoying our own downtime, so we can see that their work hours don’t correspond to our own – but in the midst of our own nine-to-five workaday world, we still end up assuming that this is how life is for most everybody else, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. As a result, it’s hard to talk about the interesting nature of what we do, as we don’t see it in ourselves, and assume others would be just as bored with it as we are.
Meanwhile, those without workplaces to go to – such as you were, as the homemaker and child-rearer – are that much more bereft of anything to say. Those who are not out in the workforce, producing or providing something (never mind what you might be growing in our son through your presence and example) seem to be considered to be “less than” what they could be, at best, and a drain on society at worst. Even leaving aside what mundane nature there might be in life at home, is that life worth talking about and outing yourself as a member of the (supposedly) indolent tribe? It’s why, even now that I don’t need to work for a living, I still head out to an ‘office’ in order to do something that might yet be considered ‘work,’ so as to say that I do something, that I’m contributing to society in some way.
However, that contribution feels so small and unworthy of comment most of the time. And why shouldn’t it? It’s not as if I put more than a few hours into it a day – barely half the time I used to when I was a part of the work farce. Moreover, too much of the time is spent doing something other than the ‘work’ I set out to do; rather than recording this or that transaction for the church or camp, I’m running the AI art program, writing to you, or going through my news feed – hardly honorable work, when you come down to it. Granted, if you were there when I got home, and asked me “How was your day? What did you do?” I’d be happy to show you – indeed, I’d be curious to know what you’d think about being made into an art piece – but to anyone else? Well… I’m almost glad that no one is home to ask me about these sorts of things.
Of course, while at home, I’m even less productive than that; apart from the time spent at the gym (which is weird for me to consider part of ‘home,’ but when it’s comfortably within walking distance – and I’m back home before and after visiting it – it makes a certain odd sense), I’m not accomplishing much when I’m there. To be sure, it seems that Daniel enjoys hanging out in the room watching videos with me – a couple of times lately, he’s even gone so far as to thank me for my time as he says good night – but it doesn’t feel like I’m actually doing anything with him. And for me to tell you about these moments would probably just feel like I was relating an ordinary day to you from back when it was the three of us together; only the venue has shifted from the family room (where the boys hang out) to my (and yes, I call it that these days) bedroom. You remember what those days were like; what’s for me to tell?
So forgive me for filling up a page with nothing in particular, but I guess I needed to get that off my chest. Maybe my life is more interesting than all that, but the days don’t seem to be. Still, if you could keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, I’d still appreciate it. After all, I’m pretty sure I still need it.
Letters to Rachel 