"Nothing? Nothing?! Tra la la?" (Bonus nerd points if you can name the movie)

If you know me or follow this blog, you know I lost my job. If not, let me explain: I lost my job. Well, the company went bankrupt and I was left out in the fucking cold, but that's neither here nor there. Well, if you're interested, it's all documented here. Anyway... 

I spend a lot of my time doing very unproductive things that still interest me even though I know it's a rabbit hole of procrastination and idle despair. Play ball in the house for an hour? Done. Fix all the uncatalogued songs in iTunes? Done. Name each one of my toes? Did it twice. Update my resume? Go fuck yourself.

I read a lot. Not good things, like books and newspapers. I've gotten into reading Facebook, which has become to me, if it was not already globally, a social newsletter. No, I still don't care about your dog or Mafia Wars or how cute your kids are (actually, I tend to like a lot of my friends' kids, so maybe not that one as much) but I believe I have taken Facebook stalking to a new level.

I have 347 "friends" on Facebook. This mere fact annoys me, and I'm sure I will discuss it in depth later. But Facebook has a become a social prosthesis for human interaction and so it goes, I have 347 friends. I have now read each one of their "about me" and "favorite quotes" sections. You should try it sometime, people write some crazy stuff about themselves. I learned quite a bit, even about people I have known for years. For instance, Dave got married once in 1975 before eventually remarrying one of the coolest people ever and spawning Bekah, one of my dearest friends. Bree is "obsessed with the DEVIL rays" and yes, "still strongly opposes the name change."  Tina claims "on a scale one to awesome, she is the shit." And my sister wisely wrote "don't trust Facebook, get to know the real me." She then listed a bunch of song lyrics. Perfect.

I've also taken to reading links that people post, which really wasn't my style before. Not sure why, I just glossed over that. But now since I whore out my blog  post stuff from  Filthy Nerdy on Facebook to share, I've been interested in what other people share. I found this little spark of awesome from a friend, Derek, who is actually pretty fucking cool in real life, not just on Facebook. He writes in his blog about his blog (very MC Escher, I like it) and about how he knows he should write more, but tangents get in the way. He says, "Tangents take priority in an almost autonomic manner... they rip your focus and do not let it go until the urgent matter is resolved. Too often, in the interest of time management or other, equally noble pursuits, we fight off tangents. In doing so, we miss many gems in life."

This struck me as particularly mind blowing, and I actually asked his permission to quote him. Yes, every once in a great while, I ask for permission instead of forgiveness, maybe just to prove I still know how to do it.

Now that my days are pretty open in the "shit to do" category, I spend a lot of time doing a very specific kind of nothing. It may seem like nothing, but it makes me really fucking happy. But then I get distracted from this nothing to some other kind of nothing, because the latter kind of nothing begged to be played with like an old toy I found in my parents' garage. You may now set your watch to example time: the other day at the gym I actually got off the treadmill at the Y where I was watching Law & Order to sit by the pool and write down every song title I could think of beginning with the letter G. And since I know you're curious, I started at Gangsta's Paradise and ended with Hendrix's Gypsy Eyes. Which is not bad for doing nothing. 

But my abundance of free time is both a blessing and a curse. I have so much free time that I run from tangent to tangent like a cracked out squirrel, and in my quest to do nothing I end up actually doing nothing, which if you've been reading carefully, or if I've been making any damn sense at all, is not the point. In my attempts to tackle tangents, the Nothing becomes this big scary overwhelming mess of Everything and I am rendered helpless. I curl up into a wounded ball of nerves and confusion and when Fiance` comes home from work and says "what are you doing?" I just pathetically whimper "nothing" and I mean it and it echos all the way down my throat into a place where my soul used to be and bounces around there because The Nothing has left me completely fucking empty.

Luckily for me, Derek also provides a kind of solution in his blog, something that came from a friend of his. "A friend of mine (and very smart lady), Sam Horn conveyed to me in a consulting session the idea to “ink it when you think it,” as after you have written down the source of the tangent, you are, “free to forget.” You can then pile it into your time management model of choice and prioritize it. My additional color is to give weight to the ideas that annoy the hell out of you. They are doing it for a reason." 

"Ink it when you think it." Fucking genius. Sam Horn, I have no idea who you are, but I would read the fuck out of your "about me" section on Facebook. Just sayin'. And Derek, you're absolutely right, the tangents that bug you are doing it for a reason.

So now I've made a list of tangents I am going to pursue in the next few days. Nothing useful like get a job or save the rain forest, just stuff that's been bugging me but I've neglected because I was always busy doing something else (read: employed like a responsible adult). And since I have become superior at doing nothing these days, I can't possibly fail. My list includes organizing my closet, going to collect sea shells, learning how to play chess, and finally watching Inception because I own it on DVD but have yet to watch it. I suspect I will do none of these things, because I will undoubtedly get tangled in tangents. 

But at least I have a starting point. And more than that, I realize now that doing nothing is a lot like doing something; if I can organize just a tad, if I can throw some time management onto that bitch, I will probably get a lot more done.  

It's funny, when I started writing this I wanted to share all the nothing I'd been up to, like going to local metal shows and my new Wednesday ritual and how I found the best chai tea latte in all of Tampa. But instead this came out. Oh, tangents. I love you. See you soon!