I’m taking today as my floating holiday from work. I mention that because it means that I’m home, doing random stuff as well as pushing through laundry. I’m not cleaning the house, because I mostly did that yesterday. In other words: I’m futzing around.
Now, when I futz around I want to do something, and ideally, something useful. So, for example, I’ll read news on the Internet, or I’ll go and tinker with my Amazon wish list for CDs (which is quite large). I may go and correct metadata on my iPod, or perhaps take some of my large collection of LPs and record them into iTunes. I spent part of this morning going through my dad’s autographs and separating out the celebrity autographs from the political autographs, for I have a dealer whose going to work with me on selling the celebrity ones. The point is: I need to be doing something. If I’m watching TV, it is rarely mindless: usually I’m killing saved programs off the TIVO. If I’m exercising (riding my bike or walking), I’m usually much better if I have a destination or goal for the ride/walk. I’ll also note this starts early: I go to bed around 10pm, and am up, of my own volition these days, before 5am.
Now, I contrast this with my wife. On days without a particular purpose, she’ll doze off in the recliner or take a nap in the middle of the day. She’ll while away the hours playing solitare on her computer, or just reading email. She’ll watch the reality programs on Discovery or Style or HGTV or the talk shows.
Of course, you can imagine how this difference gets to me at time (it’s one of the few areas where we’re very different—I’m also very time driven and like to get to places early; she’s much less concerned if she gets their the last minute).
This post is an example of my futzing around: as opposed to doing some mindless drivel or quiz, I’m writing all this as background just to ask you the question: what do you do when you have nothing in particular to do?