The other day I calculated my time commitments. Assuming 35 hours per week at the bakery (that is a minimum, really), 9 hours for class, 2.5 hours of study per hour of class time (when it is usually 3 hours) or about 23 hours, and 10 hours per week for my assistantship, I end up with a total weekly commitment time of 77 hours per week; or 11 hours of commitment per day. I am on my third day (likely of four) in which I leave home for work around five o'clock and don't return until after eight. What is all of this about? Well, it is about work, study, and meetings; oh goodness, the meetings.
I am between them for the moment, so I am not getting into them. Scheduling, let it be said, is a sorrowful time-sucking part of my life. Everyone's is different and no four people seem to share any time at all. What madness. I am not the only participant in this absurd scheduling debacle, but I worry that it is having a numbing effect. My nights of sleep are progressively shortening while my days never seem quite long enough. I still haven't made my mascarpone & cranberry brioche, though I am on my second batch of brioche dough from work and my cheese needs consuming soon. Nor have I had any opportunity to work on my compost bin, though I think I need a few more pieces of wood, maybe a few pallets to deconstruct in order to make them.
That said, I affirm that in the face of exhaustion I am happy. Classwork is demanding and abstract, potentially too abstract for me right now, and my work is satisfying. My friends and colleagues, when I see them, are dealing with similarly debilitating lifestyles, and so we commiserate together taking what sustenance we can from each other's small successes--book reports, led class discussions, cooking and baking delights, bicycle endeavors, and so on. For some crazy reason we are happy. Crazy, I know.
For some time I have felt that I did not know what to do with my time, but now I feel inundated, saturated with the potential to accomplish. Even my days off involve research, cooking, cleaning, building, biking, and learning. I feel infused in a way that I have not known for some time. Not only that, but I recognize a sense of myself-in-the-world as lively, active, motivated, and connected. My frustrations are generally frustrations of "not quite" rather than "not at all;" that is, I am bound to that I believe in and take pleasure in, even when those burdens are difficult to handle.
Now, if I can manage to pay the bills, everything will pan out just fine.
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I'm beginning to think that true happiness is always accompanied by feeling a little bit crazy, for society seems to think that contentment is nearly impossible. I have found myself extravagantly happy most days as of late, and often don't know what to do with myself or how to express it for fear of sounding insane.
ReplyDeleteMuch love, dear Caleb. We should chat soon when you are not running all over the place.
~Lauren
I love that you're still happy! It's funny because (and I had to look this up) on Tuesday I was writing in my journal about how busy life is and how there doesn't seem to be enough time to eat and sleep much less get anything for class done, but that despite all of that I am so happy!It seems to me that being happy is more a product what I'm doing, as opposed to what I have in a tangible sense. I'm with your friend Lauren--Extravagantly happy.
ReplyDeleteWhen I made it home on Wednesday--before nine, no less--I put on Bill Withers, ate a cinnamon roll, and drank a glass of wine while doing a little jig. If extravagant happiness looks like anything, at least for me right now, that was probably it. I am glad to hear that happiness is so out and about in the world.
ReplyDeleteI think of contentment as being stagnant, dry, unmoving. Happiness, though, is active and dynamic and potentially transformative. I haven't aspired for contentment in a long time because I cannot divorce it from a sense of static that I do not want to characterize my life.