wanted: professional day-dumper

it's really too bad that there aren't jobs out there for people who are just really good at killing time. and i'm not talking manslaughter here. this is first degree. it would be an ideal position for me, considering i have a general studies b.a. and am getting a bachelor of philosophy. at the end i'll be pretty good at thinking of most stuff, generally.

unfortunately, people don't want you to philosophize about their car troubles. they want a mechanic. in the same way, my coursework right now doesn't want me to sit here and philosophize about doing it, it wants a real bona-fide student to sit down and do it.

Victor Hugo wrote,

"One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation."

John Milton put it this way:

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

Both are beautiful sayings, and there is truth to what each says. Unfortunately, they're both also highly impractical. Thinking is not going to get me a good mark on my midterm. Sometime I'm going to have to put something down on paper. It has also been said that idle hands are the devil's workshop. Even then, in a twisted way, something is reportedly being done. No, I think I'm just a plain old unaccomplisher. Perhaps it's time for me to stop potentializing and start actualizing. Perhaps it's time for me to stop crapping diem and start carpeing it.

Comments

watch my language?

i have to say, sometimes swearing is so ridiculous it's downright humorous. one is particularly aware of this as a Christian. countless times people have apologized to me for swearing in my presence, as though i'm so holy that i can't be in the presence of such talk or i'll melt. at the same time, this is usually a relief, because it's difficult to communicate when every other word contributes nothing to the conversation except to make me well aware that the person i'm talking to has a vocabulary less than that of a three-year-old. then there's the other side of the coin - people who swear around me purposefully because i'm a Christian. somehow, one of the guys on my highschool bus in Northern Ontario learned that i had never used profanity, and promptly felt called to dedicate his life to causing me to curse. "just once, come on," he'd say. i could do nothing but smile. there was absolutely no reason that i could think of why i would want ...

smelly things

remember those scratch-and-sniff things? of course they still exist, but i haven't smelled one in a while. now all we have are those horrid cardboard car scents: those leaves of aesthetic tragedy. the one i'm thinking of has a strawberry scent. it might have been strawberry shortcake - that little red-headed girl with strawberries painted all over her ginormous hat, a hat ten times the size of her head. this reminds me of those markers you can buy that smell, too, often like berries of some sort. i can remember the blueberry ones the best. which scents do you remember? when Jodi and i (and sometimes Justin, Dan, Kaia or some other participant) would take empty milk jugs and stealthily place them on Mark Vust's doorstep (our Resident Director), i would sometimes smell the rotting milk. it didn't smell good. i'll give you that. but it was certainly a powerful scent. smelling things reminds me of how much i love life. like when i'm in a forest ...

one me at a time

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do." -Edward Everett Hale "i am going to make a lasting difference with my life!" "what idiocy," frail keith scoffs. "who am i to change this world, a planet upon which there is nothing new under the sun?" faithful keith timidly responds, "with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." i know that frail keith will likely have the upper hand again soon. this is my tragic flaw, my achilles' heel: Frailty imprisons Faith and tosses him in a prison of apathy, scorning and taunting, "who do you think you are, to dream of living a life beyond you?" then, licking my wounds in my hypnosis of self-pity and hopeless abandonment, i hear a still, small voice whispering, "beloved Littlefaith, why do you doubt...

random anxieties of existence

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