No, it's the rest of the world who are working too hard.
In a sense, all my time is free time, apart from when I'm at work. Even there I've got some freedom, I can stop to rest sometimes, though they don't always make that easy.
I sometimes feel useless, but I think it's a dodgy term. Slaves are useful. I think it's nice to feel needed, but not if I'm only needed for labour power or money. It would be good to feel needed because of a rare skill.
Ideally I think it should be a matter of rejoicing if you truly have lots of free time (i.e. if you can loaf about for hours every day without fear of losing out financially). But it's good to be mentally and physically active even though you don't have to be. I always feel that life is more fulfilling when I have something to do that's got a bit of a challenge in it.
It's interesting that mere existence doesn't seem to satisfy humans. Yet there are many kinds of labour that are every bit as boring. For me, if a task is to make me feel good, I have to feel that it somehow allows me to develop and grow as a human organism. All of my own ideas are like that (at least the ones that I feel motivated enough to try to perform). Few of my employer's ideas fit the bill, though I've often been surprised at how I can somehow "make a task my own" when I'm given enough freedom to do it in my own way.
25 Nov 2010, 8:47 am
