Life has a tendency to take the form of lengthy periods of extreme tedium which make you yearn for some drama to alleviate the boredom, punctuated by bursts of anxious melodrama of such intensity that you long for the tedium to return. Work, unsurprisingly, generally follows the pattern of life, so predictably you'll find yourself bored and idle one day, and suffering from PTSD the next. You might even say that the pattern of work takes the pattern of life to its ultimate, with the typical work week being either soporific or nerve shattering in its impact. Only rarely do we get those moments of blissful contentment, when we're "in the zone", being engaged and energised and brimming with enthusiasm.
The sad thing is that much of the time we have no choice in how we spend our time. The task that is making you yawn, like the one that sends your blood pressure skyward, is the one that you can't avoid - usually because it pays the bills. The activity that would generate in us some level of enthusiasm is almost always the one that we don't have time for. So we live out our lives frustrated, bored, tense and exhausted. Then we die.
At the moment I'm frustrated because I don't have time to do anything creative, like painting. On the other hand I'm spending many hours a week bored, often because I'm waiting for somebody else to give me feedback for work I've already done but can't finalise until that somebody gives the OK. I'm also spending many hours a week trying to decipher the hieroglyphic scrawl of a senior member of staff whose pedantic alterations punctuate my drafts in a most undecorous manner. The imperative to obey these scratchings, combined with the inertia which comes from being unable to read or comprehend them, induces a level of anxiety only matched by the weekly sojourn up and down the Hume Highway so that I can pursue something in the nature of a personal life outside of work. I have this overwhelming urge to put my head on a pillow and sleep and wish away the whole scenario. If only it were possible.
For the time being I'll plod along in my tedium, punctuated by instances of high anxiety, in the certain knowledge that millions of other people are plodding along beside me. Strangely, I don't find that knowledge in the least reassuring.
