About Work

You are twenty-six and your days have shape. You do not notice it because you have never known anything else. The morning has a purpose. The afternoon has demands. The evening is earned.

I want to tell you what happens when the shape dissolves.

You will have all the time in the world. That is what they tell you. That is what you will tell yourself. All the time in the world to do the things you never had time for. The books. The projects. The conversations you kept meaning to have. The emails you kept meaning to write.

Here is what they do not tell you: all the time in the world is too much time. It does not fill with purpose. It fills with nothing.

I wake up and I plan the day. A full day. I will work on the article. I will call Michael, finally, have that conversation about Dads estate we have been avoiding for two years. I will clean out the closet in the back room. I will answer the emails that have been sitting in drafts for weeks. I write it all down. The list looks productive. The list looks like a person who has things under control.

Then I take a nap. I tell myself I am tired. I am always tired now, or I tell myself I am, and the nap stretches into the afternoon. I wake up and the day has shifted. Too late to call Michael now, he will be busy. The closet can wait. I read a novel instead. I watch something on television. I work for an hour, maybe, on something that does not matter. Tiny progress on nothing important.

The grand ideas sit in a folder on the computer. I open the folder sometimes. I look at the files. I close the folder. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will have the energy. Tomorrow the restlessness will settle into focus.

It does not settle. That is the thing. I am restless all the time now but the restlessness does not move me. It just sits there, buzzing, while I do nothing about it. I have more energy for planning than doing. More enthusiasm for the idea of the project than the project itself.

The conversations I tell myself are important - I do not have them. The emails sit in drafts. The calls do not get made. I tell myself I am waiting for the right moment. The right moment does not come because there is no wrong moment anymore. Every moment is available and so no moment is urgent and so nothing happens.

Sleep eludes. That is the other thing. The days are formless but the nights are worse. I lie there with the restlessness buzzing and I think about the things I did not do and I promise myself tomorrow will be different and it is not different. It is the same. The list, the nap, the novel, the tiny progress, the drafts unsent, the calls unmade.

You are twenty-six. Your time is not your own. You resent this. You think: if I just had time, I would do so much. I would read. I would write. I would finally become the person I keep meaning to become.

I have the time now. I have all the time.

I am not becoming anyone. I am just waiting, though I could not tell you what I am waiting for. The waiting has no object. It is just the shape the days have taken, which is no shape at all.

Some days I break through. Some days the restlessness catches and I work for hours and feel like myself again. Those days are not the norm. They are the exception that makes the other days harder to bear.

I do not have advice. I am still in it. I thought retirement would be freedom and it is, but freedom with no walls is just empty space, and I do not know how to build in empty space.

The list is on the counter. Tomorrow I will do better.

I have been saying that for months.