Filling the Space

I said yesterday that the things that most persons dream about doing more of if they get a little down time just aren't appealing to me as ways to pass the entire day. 

I love reading, but I don't want to just sit around and read all day. 

I love jigsaw puzzles, but I don't want to spend an entire day hunched over one. 

I love playing with my dog, but eventually, she needs to nap. 

I enjoy cooking delicious foods, but my stomach can only hold so many of them. 

We've been trained to think this is the dream life - a life where we are able to just sit around and do this kind of stuff all day every day without a care in the world. Without other responsibilities. Without expectations. After all, your life is restricted and you can't do the things you would normally do, so now's the time, right? 

The truth is that, as a lifestyle, I find these things boring. Really. When I am living my actual life in the real world, these are the things that allow my brain to engage in a different way. In that sense, they provide a break from what I've been doing and add a depth to my life that is much needed. If you work a highly analytical job, for example, then it does something to your soul to be able to escape into a fantasy novel for a bit. If you spend your days working within a highly rigid system, then coloring gives your brain a chance to do something else. If you spend your days with a lot of freedom, having to make a lot of decisions, then having something like a puzzle - with a very clear answer - brings your brain back to the center. 

These are activities that create balance. They round out my brain at the end of a day, or in the middle of it, and give me a chance to utilize skills and perspectives and intelligences that my average day doesn't incorporate in the same way. When I am able to take a few minutes and read another chapter, find another piece, throw another toy, mix another batter, then I am reclaiming a part of myself that my responsible adult life has had to push to the side for a bit. 

That's what makes them worthwhile. 

But take me away from my life, make me sit down, remove me from the day-to-day existence of my being, and these things don't hold the same charm for me. 

They probably don't for you, either.

I think that's why it's easier for us to end up just vegging out with our extended downtime. Not doing nothing, but doing nothing worthwhile. Because we might love reading, but it's not stimulating for us in the same way when that's all we have to do. It gets tiresome pretty quickly. We might enjoy crafting in some particular way, but when that's not an opportunity to click on a part of our brain that hasn't been used today, it doesn't have the same satisfaction. It gets boring.

Because it's no longer adding depth to our life. It is, quite literally, just passing the time. And it feels very...empty. 

That's how I end up doing a whole lot of nothing - literally doing nothing - when I get the chance. I'm not interested in just filling the space. I'm more interested in thinking about what that space means and how I want to fill it. What the things that I fill it with mean and why they are enriching to my human experience. 

So no, I haven't binged any new shows. Haven't even seen a single episode of one. I might have finished one book, just reading at the same pace that I always read at - about an hour a day. I put the finishing touches on a crochet project that I started more than a month ago; it shouldn't have taken that long, but it's the way my brain engages that makes it worth the while when I pick it up. And I did a whole lot of nothing. 

And, all of a sudden, it's time to go back to my regular life. 

Or is it?