Unstructured - March 5 2023

 

Unstructured

March 5 2023

A do-nothing day.

The internet off.

Clock, turned to face the wall.

To-do list on furlough.

They say that the only reality is now.

That time is a construct.

That there's nothing objective about it,

like when you're watching the clock

or waiting for a pot to boil.

That how fast or slow it passes

depends   . . .

    are you busy, or distracted?

    in it

or looking back?

    young, when a year

may be half your life,

    or old

when it's just adding another?

But none of that matters now

in this pleasant state of drift.

The difference

between living in a wood-frame house

with right angled rooms

and fixed sheet-rock walls,

and one with fluid surfaces

that are soft and curved.

Unstructured time,

watching the light slowly change

as the earth moves

along its predetermined path

steady as clockwork,

utterly indifferent

as to whether I'm here

or not.

And my mind

freely idling

in its default state;

contemplative

undisciplined

receptive.

Making connections

that would never have been.

You could say I'm lazy.

wasting time

frittering my life away.

A heretic

in a world that worships work.

An architect

of the improbable

thinking outside the box.

I place a high value on unstructured time. There isn't enough of it in most people’s lives. It’s too bad that in a culture with a strong work ethic, we feel guilty about lazy do-nothing days, because that state of drift is not only highly restorative, but also when we do our most creative work.

I've found that's the best word for free time is this: “unstructured”. The architectural analogy naturally followed.