Time

They say time goes by slower when there's nothing to do. But I've experienced the opposite. Time goes slowest when you have several very different things to do in the day, especially if one of them involves going somewhere far away and then returning. It always seems like the journey should have taken more time than it did in the end. The journey stretches time out, makes it seem like you did something considerable. Even simply getting up early in the morning, moving around, lots of talking, turning in papers, writing tests, going to meetings, going to work-study at the Language Resources Center - feels like I'm getting shit done, like I'm busy, but not in a good way. I trudge through it, I wait for it to end.

I only ever have class a couple of hours a day, but every day of the week that I have class somehow feels filled up and tainted, like it's not a good clean segment of time that I can savor and use for something I'd actually like to do. Whenever I take time out to paint during the week, I feel guilty, like I should be studying instead. But I can never actually bring myself to study, so I break up the unfilled pieces of time in the work week into surfing music blogs, going for a smoke, having a cup of coffee. The things in-between. The things which would be okay to do between studying, if I ever got to that part. I avoid studying as much as I avoid the guilt of doing something that's not for a class, like art, by filling up my day with moments-in-between. Somehow they never make me feel guilty.

So I 'get through' the week. And then it's the weekend, like a long stretch of freeway, and it goes by just as fast. I can sit in the living room of my apartment all day, typing, writing, youtube-ing, and playing scrabble online and before I know it it's dark out, my roommates have changed into their pajamas and emerged from their rooms after a good evening of studying for a chat over late-night cereal and a cup of tea.

Procrastination. It's not an art. It's a phobia of feeling time passing, and guilt. The fear of spending time doing something you don't want to do, because you'd never want to waste more time than you need to doing something unenjoyable, but you can't quite figure out how to cut it down to the minimum.

It's 3 a.m. and I'm drinking coffee, but I won't be utilizing the time it's giving me. I'll split it up between cigarettes, chatting online and writing down random thoughts like this. It's been three months since I left China and I'm still living on the Beijing schedule. I'm failing to seize the day. I'm just waiting for the time to pass. That's one thing I can always count on.

Time-management skills. I'd like to take a class on that, but then I'd probably end up procrastinating on it.