Going Inkless

There are fluid properties to free time, whether vacations or their lesser cousins, weekends. You would think it would stay put in its own neat little pile. Here is the time that's mine, you could say. I've carved this piece from the block I share with the world, and it's my time to relax and be free to do what I want to do. It would seem to be the definition: Free Time. But instead, it seeps out of the corral you've designed. It leaks or ebbs from where you had intended to keep it, and you end up filling that free time with responsibilities and mundane tasks rather than the things you say you'd do if only you had the free time. This is my twentieth year at my workplace, so I've been allotted more vacation time than ever before. It's so much that I had to plot most of the days at the start of the year, spread out across every month, just so I won't run the risk of realizing I have a whole pile left at the end of the year. Theoretically, ...

Recently, I confessed to a pen pal that I had been struggling with a little depression a few letters back. I described to her the steps I had taken to shake it off and apologized if my mood had filtered into the letter. We correspond through audiotape, so I was particularly concerned about the infectious nature of vocal tone, and I also didn't want her worrying about me. The recording is just a point in time and not representative of the whole roundness of things as I've described in earlier posts. My friend responded with astonishment. "Your voice is always so cheerful and positive," she explained, "I didn't think you got depressed about many things." The truth is, everyone gets depressed. There is some comfort in that. We are all united in the experience. We can let go of any self-defeating feelings of inadequacy at our lack of perfect happiness because they're all based on illusion. Everyone feels sad or lonely or small. Everyone gets frustrated a...