Forever Makes a Delicious Chicken Salad and Then Eats It. He Also Ponders Time

My sister holds the notion that if you give a person a half hour to complete a task, it will be accomplished in 25 minutes, however if you give that same person that same task and a deadline of five days, it will take all five days. I speak of this now because this highly structured, regulated and routinized* world we live in so often demands that we "find time" to do things. Today, while playing housewife, I did a load of laundry for my roommate because he didn't have any time to do it himself. Hey, what else do I have to do?

Which is exactly the point I am trying to get at. I have no deadlines, time frames, or any schedule at all. Half of my day I'm not even sure if I'm awake. So returning to my sister's principle, if you give a person five days to complete a simple task, what happens if you give them no deadline at all? This is the incredible world I live in--one where time isn't even non-linear, it's a non-factor. (I'll avoid a lengthy segue here about our definitions of "time," but Stephen Hawking treats the subject admirably in A Short History of Time, specifically chapters two, nine, and ten).

In last week's post I mentioned that I had to go to the grocery store. I just got around to that today. It probably would never have happened if I didn't really need to eat. In that same post I mentioned that I would address my showering schedule and the fact that I might have AIDS. Neither of those posts have been attempted. To be fair, both subjects being equally important demand a lot of attention. But I guess that's the point; I have had nothing but "time" to address these issues but have simply gotten lost in the chronic abyss that is my life. When you have absolutely no time constraints, what does it matter if it's done today, tomorrow, or 1,000,000 years from now. This is the philosophical argument I'm forced to address every time I am confronted with activity. I find myself quite often saying, "what does it matter, I'll get to it in a million years," and then smirking and imagining myself high-fiving Stephen Hawking. Sometimes I even go down that road where I say "what does it matter, I'll get to it in infinity." But that always leads me to attempt a comprehension of infinity and I usually end up getting really dizzy and passing out on our living room floor. Again, to be fair, this could be because I haven't had a lot to eat lately, so maybe it has less to do with infinity and more to do with groceries. Either way, I stick to the more reasonable "I'll get to it in a million years" and find myself doing very little quite often.

But back to the groceries. Confronted with the prospect of starvation, coupled with the fact that I had parked last night in a "residents only" spot and was already in my car to move it, I decided to venture to the grocery store. Upon getting home I changed my roommate's load of laundry and set about preparing my chicken salad and then immediately eating it. In doing so I lost track of "time" and didn't pull out my roommate's shirt from the dryer a little early, like he had asked. It's probably ruined forever. But that's what happens when you don't have to answer to "time." I'm sure he'll understand.

Stay strong America-

Forever Unemployed

*That's my first time using this word--a 1/2 Day of Rest might be in order to recognize this occasion.