On Planning for Breaks
This should be the last entry here that refers to my current move away from my university dorm to the great unknown. My flight to leave was scheduled for this evening, and so I knew well in advance that I could get away with leaving some of the packing to do until this morning. Not only that, but the time frame in my head to complete this final packing stage was extremely generous, calling for more time than most people would likely need. Just this once, you could say I’m ‘most people’. The way this operates in my mind is that I have, for that large section of packing time, allotted a large portion of it to doing nothing. Usually, ‘nothing’ translates to watching TV or a video of some sort, and today was no exception. It is extremely helpful to know while doing a task I don’t enjoy that there will be some respite soon, and it’s even better when it’s a specific time I can count the minutes until.
If I’m exhibiting one of my more ingenious and infrequent qualities, I will be so clever as to schedule that ‘break’ for a time when there is already another process being carried out. It is only occurring to me now, as I sit at the boarding gate for my flight, that I realise how mundane and irrelevant this all is. But I’m stuck for a better idea right now (and I’m lazy, mustn’t forget that), so I’ll soldier on with this one. What I was talking about before I went on this little tangent was in reference to the practice of making sure as much time is used as possible. I don’t at all want to encourage feeling bad about taking some free, unaccounted-for time, but it is always a nice added bonus to have something running in the background. For example, this morning, I had to wash my bedding before putting packing it. I thought I’d do future me a solid, so that he won’t have to worry about a mildewy pillowcase when he just wants to go to sleep. I used that time, while that washing machine churned, completely unproductively. I do not, however, feel guilty about it at all. The system works.
I would like to take another tangent here at the end to throw some much-deserved appreciation towards vacuum-sealable bags. I bought a few large ones, as well as the hand-pump required to put them to use, and massively cut down on how much space my stuff took up. Because there’s only one thing around here that can be filled with hot air, and that’s me. I am slightly ashamed that, after sealing the first bag, I was expecting it to be lighter for no knowable reason. Goes to show how hopeless I am with physics both in a classroom and when it comes to the real world. I’m honestly stalling for words now; I’ll write a few more to end this, but only because I have another minute-and-a-half before they call for boarding to start and I’m a thrill-seeker. I bid you all adieu.