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2002-05-28 - 11:55 a.m.

Goofing off is a lost art!

Even with an added day to a weekend there wasn't enough time for some ace goofing off. Time got away from me, and I'm back at work, groggy and in a pucker and wondering where the hell all the extra time went I had lined up for doing jackshit. By now, of course, you've realized the art of goofing off is a priority of mine, and I can get cranky if deprived of goof-off time.

If recent studies are to be believed, I'm not alone in wanting to gather up more time for goofing off. Sixty-four percent of working Americans say by Sunday night--or at the end of a vacation--they ask themselves "Where did the time go?" rather than feeling relaxed, rested and ready for another work week. In the last 39 years, there's been a 15 percent drop in the number of people saying they're satisfied with their down time. We're supposedly a society with more leisure time than ever before, we've got all kinds of computerized gadgets and gizmos to help us do our work more efficiently, and Gawd knows our government is probably running some billion-dollar research on the benefits of leisure time. So why can't we goof off and enjoy it?

Probably because we've got chores to take care of around the house or other responsibilities squeeze the fun out of free time; maybe we're consumed by guilt since some people would like us to believe goofing off is childish and unproductive. Well, those may apply to you, they don't apply to me. Household chores hold no fascination, and I sure don't suffer any guilt in making The Great Escape!

I like to think goofing off balances my work time, and I also think doing nothing is something. Rationalization, you say? Maybe, but I don't much care. I can come up with some excellent reasons why I should goof off (and these all without the benefit of some billion-dollar government research project).

It's good for digestion. A period of doing nothing after a meal lets our stomach work to complete its digestive process. Remember when we were kids and told not to go into the water following a meal? We'd get cramps and drown or some such thing. Well, that's since proven to be nonsense. Still, many animals take a long rest from active work after a meal. Gawd knows, as much as I like to eat, I should lie around goofing off a few hours of each day to avoid indigestion.

I'm waiting for just the right moment. Give a little thought to a crocodile, floating on the water's surface and looking a lot like an inert log. Doing nothing. Wrong, the croc is busy lying in wait for a meal. Let some juicy fish or bird or other tasty animal get too close and whammy! He goes into action and chomps down. The "sit and wait" method might not look like much, but it works.

I work fast, so I'm already done with my work. A stretch, but, hey, if it works why not use it.

This is my slow season. I take after the birds. If all my eggs have hatched and my nest is full, I take care of business. But once the work is done and the nest is empty, I can settle back to a slower life.

The pure pleasure of goofing off is a remedy to all the mundane duties of adulthood. And it can generate creativity. Downtime is when we become ourselves, lying in the grass and imagining fun things in the clouds, running barefoot through a water puddle, skimming flat stones across water. It's a hiatus, maybe passing for boredom, but is can easily become the moving of wheels inside that fuel creativity.

When I goof off, I can let myself get into an activity-or nothing-and not worry about whether I'm making a fool of myself. Playing is fooling around, and fooling around requires fools!

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