Drawn to Sloth
August 6th, 2005
For the past month or so, I have found myself drawn to sloth on the weekends. Where I could quite simply go to the allotment for a couple of hours tend to the vegetables and keep things sociable with Bernard (my grandfather’s gardening friend).
I find myself sat in my pyjamas at 9pm having spent all day at the computer. Hold tight though; I’m not at the computer chatting; I’m not at the computer working and I’m not even at the computer watching films. In fact I’m at the computer sitting at the computer… looking at the computer… moseying to the fridge and grabbing things to feed idly on… and returning to the computer listening to music which passes by without a single memory of what I may have heard and allowing time to pass by.
The problem with this is; I cannot really help myself from it. I am quite concious of the fact that I am doing the nothing but I cannot help from doing it, in fact I quite enjoy it somewhere deep down inside but then; I punish myself when I stop and think about it and feel bad about the fact that I am doing it. I’ll lay in bed tonight pulling fists at myself when looking back on what I have achieved today.
To digress a little, I’d like to pontificate and say this is me meditating in my own special way; or even I am appreciating my personal space. When thinking about it in this way it makes me bitter and ungratefull to all the guilt driven ideas we have built in our heads about doing nothing thus being useless. Granted, I have spent a lot of my later life sitting at home contemplating life, the universe and everything… and whilst doing so, felt utterly rotten about it. Especially when family members arrive home and make you feel utterly worthless and totally incompetent and it is then that I have to remind myself that the space we’re given is too tight.
Perhaps, my lapses on the weekend reflect that I am merely trying to catch up with my own identity; which I allow myself to loose during the week, whenI hide myself behind a thousand different personas that are not myself, just to get through the day.
Am I a bad person?