I have been working 40 hours a week for some time now. The routine is welcomed warmly; I can finally eat and sleep like normal person. I have two days off a week, Mondays and Sundays, and I use them to study for the chemistry course I’m doing online (gotta keep my options open for uni, you know). I think I have made a friend at work that I go climbing with sometimes, and every once in a while I’m invited out after shifts, and I go, although it takes repeated asking from my coworkers and several days of indecision before I convince myself of going. Unbeatable anxiety.
That’s pretty much it. That’s my life. I was asked the other day about my hobbies and I realised that answering it was not as easy as it used to be. I had all these words on the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t get them past my lips because I hadn’t actually found myself particularly enjoying these activities the last few months, or doing them at all. Yes, I read, but so slowly and sporadically. My last three crochet projects lie abandoned in a drawer under my bed. I made some cookies today but the KitchenAid has otherwise been left untouched for a long time. And besides, I didn’t feel a particular urge to bake them, but I rather made them with the idea of giving them to other people. I have such a strict routine that I can’t find any mental room for creativity, so both my mind and Google Drive sit relatively empty. I pick up my flute from time to time, hoping that the familiar feel of the keys under my fingertips will transport me back to a brighter place but the practise to feel and sound as I did two years ago would require some motivation I cannot bring myself to muster up. What I’ve really been doing when I’m not at work is sitting in my room, listening to music with one ear and my thoughts with another. I daydream a lot now. That’s not a real hobby.
After I finished impulsively deep cleaning the entire bathroom earlier today (floor, walls, shower, you name it – it was scrubbed), I was getting ready for bed and thought to myself that this gap year is not going the way I wanted it to. I remembered that I had all these great ideas for what I’d be doing, and as graduation drew closer, they sort of changed into more mundane things: everything I couldn’t do while I was at school. That’s exactly why I rejected the job in Norway; I would have time to live this quiet life that would be mine and no one else’s. It’s definitely quiet, but I often feel like this life doesn’t necessarily belong to me.
I think it’s time for a change. The first step will be to put down my phone. Never in my life have I been so susceptible to the addictive power of this small brick. With my friends now away, I have made it such a habit to check it what feels like every few minutes or more for something new, something I’ve not heard of. I don’t like living with the knowledge that it might be the reason I find myself in this situation in the first place.
I fear that the second step is working a bit less. I like how work just gives me something to do, like school was sometimes just assignments and essays one after another that I completed dutifully because to not do so was simply unthinkable. Also, what can I say, I’m a material girl. But if I’m going to keep up with the chemistry while working on making my life my own, I need some extra time.
The third step is probably lists. Playlists, to-do lists – they make everything better.
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