The Curse of Free Time

Hej san,

I know all of you with midterms and projects and papers and to-do lists that never end are giving the title of this post an evil look. Who wouldn't want some free time? Or a lot of free time? That's one of my favorite ways to procrastinate, actually; I love daydreaming and planning what I'll do...on the weekend. During the summer. As soon as I have some free time.

So calling free time a curse? You're all rolling your eyes at me, I know it. Let me explain a little what I mean by the curse of free time, and then you can decide if you think I've completely lost it or not.

How many of us actually do the things we've daydreamed about? I rarely do. Sure, that's mostly because the free time never happens, or because we don't have the means to make our adventures happen right then, or because they were impractical in the first place. We usually have very good reasons for not making all of our daydreams happen. But think back to a post I wrote a while ago about turning dreams into plans. Henri had to convince me that I could just book a flight and go; it wasn't something I even thought about doing. Perhaps it's because I don't have a spontaneous personality in general, but I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm very much in the habit of thinking and not at all in the habit of doing.

When I think about the things I do, they're generally because of some expectation coming from someone else. I write papers because they've been assigned. I study for exams because that's how students pass classes. When I was a ski racer, I ran or lifted or jumped when my coaches told me to. I tuned my skis because that's what you do before a race. Now, when I say it like this, it sounds really whiny. I don't mean it like that at all. I chose both to be a student and a ski racer, and I love doing both things. My point is that unless you look at the very big picture, you don't see my choices. When you look at even a time frame of two or three months, you see my professors' choices, or my coaches' choices.

Right now, I have free time. I have loads of free time. I have six hours of lectures a week, and next to none immediate required outside work. Swedish does have two exams at the end of May, listening and written, and my philosophy class has a twelve to fourteen page paper based upon a group project also due at the end of May, but these things don't have the immediacy of calculus homework due three times a week. The things I do based on expectation are minimal. When I realized how much time I was going to have after neuroscience, I was delighted. This is what we all dream of. I had no idea how difficult it would be to actually do something with my time.

Perhaps this goes back to my really non-spontaneous personality, perhaps to the fact that I'm out of the habit of doing, and perhaps because I'm out of the habit of decision-making, but I've found myself doing...nothing. I have ideas and plans and things I think about doing. But I haven't been doing them. I spent my time taking quizzes on a website called Sporcle (a really, really good way to lose a lot of time without noticing it) or idly web-surfing. I stayed up late and slept in. And the more I did this, the more it was hard to do things I knew I needed to do. Going to the grocery store (which is a FIVE MINUTE WALK away) became a chore, and I would wait until I had nothing in my cabinet but a couple pieces of knäckebröd (the Swedish name for the cracker/flat bread I'm addicted to). Things I wanted to do, like finish writing my stories about Rome for you? They crossed my mind occasionally, but not often. I became a slug of the highest order.

That doesn't mean I did absolutely nothing. I've spent time visiting Brooke in the hospital. I like to cook her lunch or treats because she can't stand the hospital food. On Easter I made her hot cross buns, which are a British and Australian tradition. It was my first yeast bread, and they turned out reasonably well! Brooke and her parents were delighted, at any rate, and I thought they were very good, if just a touch dense. Hopefully she's going home any day now. I also memorized the names of every country in the world, even the masses of islands in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Australia. I also got caught up on sleep, which felt amazing.

And that's about all I can say for the last three and half weeks.

I don't think this is all bad. Catching up on sleep was important, and I think a serious decompression has been coming on since my second year at university. But at some point I started feeling bad because I was being so lazy, so I kept distracting myself with time-wasting things so I wouldn't think about the fact that I hadn't posted something for you, or actually studied Swedish verb tenses, or gone to IKEA. Yep, still haven't made it down there. I've been thinking about doing that since the first week I arrived here. There have been a couple of times I've thought about getting my act together and actually doing something (notice the first Rome post went up about a week and a half ago) but my motivation putters pretty quickly and I go back to wasting my time.

So what brought on this change? Three posts in two days, and I've started running, and I PROMISE I'm going to IKEA. Today. Right after I see Brooke. Actually, it was a very random article I saw on BBC about willpower during Easter, when there is so much chocolate around. It suggested that willpower is like a muscle; you can train it, and it gets "tired" at the end of the day. I thought about this, and it made sense to me. I used to have a lot of willpower. I blame training for skiing with a bunch of boys; not keeping up was not an option. I can still be very stubborn, but I don't have the self-discipline and ability to self-motivate that I remember having. Perhaps this is because I had help in the form of coaches and teachers pushing me, and in university that is significantly less. Right now that help is very close to non-existent, and so is my willpower.

At any rate, the article suggested ways to "exercise" your willpower, like doing everything with your non-dominant hand or consciously working on your posture. I've never been good at remembering to sit up straight, but I've toyed with the idea of trying to be ambidextrous for years and never really done it. I give it up when I'm taking notes in class, because I would prefer to be able to read those later, but I've been cooking, doing dishes, combing my hair, and writing with my left hand. My handwriting hasn't improved at all, but I'm getting better at dishes. But last Wednesday, I managed to waste very close to the entire day. And then I got mad.

I got mad for lots of reasons. I'm not taking advantage of the time I have here in Sweden. I spend the vast majority of my time alone in my room, doing things I could do anywhere in the world. I used to be an athlete, and believe me when I say I've gotten very out-of-shape. (Granted, laying flat on my back for five days straight during my little hospital adventure last May did nothing good for me, but that was nearly a year ago.) I'm barely doing what is required for my classes, and sliding by on work that's sketchy at best. I think about my seventeen-year-old self, as a senior in high school; she was the most on-top-of-her-game I've ever been. I was in the best shape of my life, I was doing really well in school, I had awesome friends. I know that year wasn't perfect, and I remember plenty of times I was frustrated or tired or sick. But I got mad, because I want that back. I definitely want that body back. I'm twenty, for crying out loud. I'm not supposed to have "peaked" three years ago.

I have ideas about what I want to do, about how I want to live my life. And I haven't been anywhere close to them. I've occasionally made attempts for them; about once a month last year I would get motivated and go for a run. At the beginning of every semester, I swear to myself this will be the semester I stay on top of my homework and study daily instead of cramming before the exam. (It lasts two weeks, three in a good semester.)

Right now I have a 危机. Yeah, that's Chinese, but it works better than any English word I know. Directly translated it means crisis, but if you take the symbols apart, the first one means danger and the second two mean opportunity. The opportunity: I have the time to get myself in some kind of shape. I have the time to write stories. (I have two that I'm been puttering around with for quite a while, and I've always said to myself, oh, when I have some free time...) I have time to write you all incredible blog posts. I have time to learn how to cook new and interesting things. I have time to travel to different parts of Sweden, and find something really amazing for my brother's birthday present. I have time to wander up and down the river in downtown Uppsala and watch the flowers grow, to go to Carolina Rediviva and see the incredible rare books they have there, to do all of the things I've daydreamed about doing...when I finally had some free time.

The danger? Getting caught in making decisions. What do I want to do first? Getting caught in being lazy because I have no deadline. I'll go for a run...tomorrow. Losing my motivation again, and wasting the time I have. Getting caught in feeling anti-social and awkward and lonely. Doing exactly what I've been doing for the last three and a half weeks; getting caught in the curse of free time.

I think 危机 sums it up pretty well.

When I was sixteen I raced a Super G in Vail. For those of you who haven't ever ski raced, Super G is the second-fastest discipline, with very spaced-out turns and occasionally jumps. You have one run per day, and that one run is your race. It's one of my favorite disciplines, because it's not quite as extreme as downhill, but it's still a total rush. Usually you have two Super G races scheduled together over a weekend, but in the case of dangerous weather or snow conditions on the first day, you can run both races in one day. The particular Super G in Vail I'm remembering was a case like that; Saturday had been postponed and we were running both runs on Sunday. When this happens, we use the same course set twice, because rearranging the gates would take too much time. I love it when this happens. My second run on a course set is almost always better than my first, because I've had a chance to practice it first.

My first run was about average for me; not slow by any means, but not particularly fast. My second run, everything conspired in my favor. The light was good and sunny, the snow was perfect, and I'd run the course once already. The top of the course is pretty flat, which was one of my strengths as a speed skier. About a third of the way down was the steep pitch, which was three gates long on this particular course (I'd guess seven to ten normal free skiing turns.) The pitch was kind of icy, and my first run I hesitated coming over the knoll onto it and slid on the first turn. That isn't fast, and it set me up poorly for the rest of the pitch.

My second run, I came over the knoll and I clearly remember thinking to myself, "I want to go fast." I moved forward, drove my hands, and stood on my outside edge. I nailed that pitch, and I came flying through the middle flats and the bottom rollers. That run got me a third-place medal in my age group.

I'm telling you this story not because it's one of my favorite days of racing (although it is) and not because I love to think about, read about, and talk about ski racing (although I do). When I came over that knoll, I flipped a switch in my head. I decided I was going fast that run, and that was that. And I did. I can think of six or seven other races when I did the same thing. Now, why on earth didn't I flip the switch at every race? In keeping with the switch metaphor, it's hard to find the switch. Saying "I'm going to go fast" isn't the same as flipping the switch. Deciding to get in shape isn't the same as putting on my tennis shoes and walking out the door and going for a run. I'm not very good at finding it and turning it on, even though I think about it a lot. Doing is harder than thinking.

Right now my "switch" is switched on. I could also say I'm motivated right now, or that my willpower is back. That happened Wednesday night. It's not perfect. Thursday I was motivated and productive until about one in the afternoon before I started being unproductive again. That lasted until about eleven, when I finished my last blog post about Rome and went to bed. Today (Friday) I started over. I went for a run (I am SORE, and that by itself should tell you how ridiculously out of shape I am), I've written this post, and the kitchen is spotless. (Or, it was two hours ago, the last time I was in there.) I don't know if I'll be productive all day today (though I plan to be). I don't know if I'll be motivated to start over tomorrow, or on Sunday, or next week. In some ways, I've been struggling with turning the switch on my entire life. Now it's just more important; I need it on to push myself because I don't have anyone to push me.

I am committing to once-a-week posts for you, however. Though today is Friday, I'm going back to Wednesday as posting day, so this time it'll be less than a week until my next post. I plan to have some kind of adventure to tell you stories about so you don't have to muddle through ski racing metaphors for my introspection again.

Until then,
Hej då