ezbzbfcg2 wrote:
I think the question is about having a period without any major responsibilities. With nothing to focus on, many of us may become withdrawn and depressed thinking about our lot in life. "Too much time on our hands."
Ah, right.
Doesn't happen to me a lot these days. I've usually been able to find something to do. My life seems to be a continuing cycle of noticing things that make me uncomfortable, figuring out strategies for reducing them, trying the strategies out, and refining them based on how efffective they turn out to be. That and just taking in what people are saying (mostly reading, on the Web), getting curious about something in there, and finding out more about it. Rarely, I might not notice any discomforts that I can see any feasible way of fixing and I might not happen to read anything that interests me enough to look further into. Times like that don't make me shut down, they just make me restless frustrated and annoyed.
In theory I should always be able to find something to do, because I must have a backlog of hundreds of things I mean to do one day, but sometimes they just don't seem very attractive and I can't be bothered to start - sometimes there's a sticking point because the thought of the task bores me or there's some fear that I'll make a mess of it, and I'm not always in the mood to think very energetically about what that fear is or how to proceed - I get kind of apathetic. But those times are rare and they usually pass by on their own without any need for me to do much but wait for the "weather" to improve. I don't really brood or get depressed. I can feel rather flat sometimes, but my ability to jump back into some semblance of activity is never far away. My goals aren't very far-reaching and I suppose I feel rather powerless to do anything stunningly great (though I still feel there's hope for my music in that respect), but have a lot of confidence in my ability to solve small problems. So I guess I set myself mediocre targets and achieve them, and I'm not unhappy that way, I don't worry myself about not being a world leader or winning the Olympic games.