I’ve got nothing but time. It’s been two years since I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that took my ability to walk and work. Thankfully only for a time. I’m on other side mostly which has afforded me a chance at introspection on the experience of living with all the time in the world but none of the energy to live it. When you are busy you have fantasies about time. The freedom it will afford you. What you will do with it. Canceling a plan is a delicious pleasure. You crave free time. Which is a misnomer really. Nothing about time is ever free. It’s the most expensive commodity we have. And you can’t really buy more.
So it’s an an odd sensation going from being busy to have total control over your time. It’s being wealthy in the truest sense. I’m a time billionaire. I have most of my life ahead of me and no real claims on my time. But when I was working on recovery I found that despite having no schedule or obligation I couldn’t make any use of my time. I was like the bibliophile Henry Bemis in Twilight Zone who is stranded in a library after a nuclear apocalypse but breaks his glasses before he can even crack a book. He had all the time in the world but no way to spend it. It’s a heartbreaking realization.
For the first time in my life I answered to no one. I spent my day in bed. But not because I wanted to. Because I couldn’t get myself out of bed. People would ask me well how do you spend your time? “If I were you I’d binge watch television or catch up on all the great works of literature.” I’d try to be polite about it but I was too tired to hold my head up on a pillow and follow a plot. My mind was too foggy and slow to take in insights. I lay in bed in a perpetual twilight. Barely cogent. Like Henry Bemis just as I thought I would have all the time in the world human frailty intervened. Without his glasses he couldn’t read. Without my health I couldn’t think. And like Henry my greatest pleasure was ripped away.
Unlike Henry Bemis I got better. We will never know if he found another pair of reading glasses in his bombed out world. I like to think he did. Maybe he wandered stumbling for miles and found an optometrist store with just the right prescription.
A new section I’ll add to each day with some media and consumables I found interesting.
Cosmetics: I’ve recently become diligent about applying vitamin C as a skin serum and my face has never looked better. I use this Superdose from Beauty Pie.
Media: New York Magazine is laundering the ZeroHedge conspiracy that the virus is escaped from a lab. So that’s fun to see come full circle to media legitimacy. Zero Hedge walked so NY Mag could run?
Food: I ate pulled pork from West End Tavern in Boulder.
Clothing: For my own amusement I wore a pair of pink sweatpants while taking my daily hike.