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It's winter, folks, and when you live in the northeast United States, winter means snow. Now, I don't live in Minnesota or someplace similar, so I won't be complaining about the winter or the snow. But winter always brings a host of Things I Gotta Do with it--mainly snow management, which in turn is mainly comprised of two things: Shoveling my sainted Mother's sidewalk when it snows, and digging my car out from snow drifts. Once January rolls around, I know the next few weeks of my life will probably be spent not writing and creating and drinking, things I was born to do, but shoveling snow. When I started writing this column a few years ago, the main focus of it was to be all the stuff I end up doing behind the scenes of innerswine.com and how that took away from writing the zine itself--not a great theme, but it was the best I could do. I'm a man of withered talents, after all. As a result, I've spent the last few years pondering the subject of Shit I Gotta Do, and I've come to an obvious but easily overlooked conclusion: The whole world is designed to keep you from doing the things you want to do. The list of shit you gotta do is endless and irresistible. Even leaving out the Day Job, which is probably the biggest Time Suck any of us have to deal with (still preferable to being a skin waste like Paris Hilton, though), it's stupefying, sometimes, how much of your time is devoted to the simple expedient of living. As a matter of fact, I think my life breaks down like this, time-wise: 75% - The simple business of living (job, groceries, cleaning, laundry, eating, washing, evading parole officers) 20% - Entertainment and recreation (video games, cocktails, baseball games, pretending to be a foreign tourist in Times Square) 5% - Writing Your mileage may vary. I'm sure some disciplined people out there manage much better than 5% of their time for their supposed purpose in life. I'm sure there's some noble soul out there who works four jobs, cares for his elderly grandparents, and still manages to spend more than 5% of his time writing or painting or whatever. Even so, you can't deny that most of our time is dedicated to depressingly mundane activities, like shopping for groceries or cleaning the goddamn bathroom after you lurched in from the bars the night before and regurgitated your evening in the vague direction of the toilet. Actually, I should maybe adjust the numbers above to include a specific sub-category for that, since I likely spend about 10% of my time doing that. But I digress. The point is, the sheer amount of More Shit I Gotta Do is stunning. The amount of energy required just to continue living is exhausting--no wonder I never seem to accomplish as much writing as I feel I should. How can I when the goddamn bathroom requires a sandblasting every day? Now, I know what you're thinking, and yes, inflatable, disposable toilets would definitely improve my life, and possibly yours, but they're not coming any time soon and we can't waste any more of our lives waiting for them. Besides, if you were to solve the problem of cleaning your bathroom--becoming a worldwide hero and superstar in the process--there's still an endless tract of life-sustaining chores left to do. It never ends. Basically, until we achieve the Star Trek-like situation where we're just mental energy with no physical bodies to feed and care for, life is pretty much dominated by the simple struggle to survive. When you think about it, though, this is kind of amazing, huh? We live in a technologically advanced age, a time when we can put men on the moon (but choose not to as it's simply too much bother, apparently) yet I still spend more time cleaning my bathroom and feeding myself than I do creating the art which, sadly, will be my legacy when I'm dead and gone. I mean, weren't we supposed to have robot maids issued free by the state by now? Aren't we supposed to be genetically engineered to not need food any more? I mean, come on. It's the 21st century, not 1940s Soviet Russia! I could, of course, decide to make some changes. I could quit my job. Since I now spend about 50 hours a week working, and only about 70 hours a week doing other things (aside from sleeping) that would be an instant gain of more than 100% free time. Of course, this assumes a) I don't just waste my regained time drinking bourbon and watching Family Guy reruns on TV and b) I survive the rage of my wife The Duchess, who usually reacts to any suggestion that I quit my job with the sort of vitriol and rage most people reserve for baby eaters. I might have some slim chance of triumphing over A, but there's no way I survive The Duchess. So this really isn't an option, sadly. I could stop cleaning or washing. This wouldn't be as dramatic a gain as quitting my job, of course, but it would still probably net me 10+ hours a week. I have a tendency to doze off in the shower, so just stopping showers would improve things immediately. The downside of course would be ostracization from society and probably a divorce, although I think the Funk Factor would keep The Duchess sufficiently far away from me to prevent a beat-down like in the no-job option. The real problem here is my borderline-OCD need to clean. I think I might be able to push through the filth and reach a level of peace with it, but the pushing through won't be easy. I'm thinking something like Howard Hughes, except without the budget. If showing up to work wearing tissue boxes as shoes and urinating into glass bottles at my desk is going to be a problem, I might not be able to pursue this option. I could try combining activities. Possibly my best choice would be to see if I can't mash chores together into one mega-chore--like maybe strapping mops to my feet while I vacuum, so I can mop behind myself as I vacuum ahead of myself. In fact, that's genius. The problem is that the maintenance work you do in life is rarely compatible with, say, eating. It's not easy to combine things like that, and even if you manage it, you look ridiculous. And a man in my position can't afford to be made to ridiculous. The best I can do, I think, with this option is start writing this lame columns while I'm doing other things. As a matter of fact, I'm cleaning up last night's unhappy ending while I write this! Don't ask how. You don't want to know. So there I am, same as I was when I came in: Screwed. The only thing that makes me feel better is that you're probably just as screwed as I am--that does, indeed, heal the wounds a bit. Until next time, email me your disappointed rage at mreditor@innerswine.com, as usual. Jeff |
January 17, 2005