Old Notes; Febuary 2010

Lets talk February. February has a history in my life of crawling by, second by second. So far that seems to hold true, regardless of my position in the world. Or it could be the result of the inordinate amount of time I’ve spent staring at the various calendars/planners I’ve began keeping. Making plans, counting days, changing plans, circling holidays and other dates of interest. Then I stare at the wall for a while, drink some coffee, begin recounting days, scribbling in numbers/plans into all three planners/calenders and basically repeating the whole cycle over again. I’m not proud of my February accomplishment of wasting my life away, but if you really want to know what I spend the majority of my time doing, well, lets be honest: nada/leeto/nothing/squat. Sure I go to the school a few times a week and have some amazing sessions with my teachers, I wander around and have a few humorous encounters with the locals. Yet it all begins and end with this: staring at my wall. The variation on the Wall Stare includes; with/without music, with/without reading material (book/magazine/poetry anthology/nutrition label on a candy wrapper), with/without fly swatting, with/without a snack, with/without real clothes on, with/without guilty thoughts regarding the wasting of time, etc. Basically, I’m a champion in the Wall Stare. There’s an indentation on my couch cushion to prove it.

“There must be life outside of the Wall Stare?” you might ask. The simple answer is yes, and I have accumulated a lot of excuses that keep me from participating in that life.
Sample Excuse List:
1) It’s F’in hot outside
2) It’s raining, therefore I cannot go out now or later since the roads will be muddy
3) I will have to talk to everyone, greet them and tell them what I’m doing (nothing)
4) I’ll just wait a little bit before leaving the house
5) I need to finish this book
6) I cant find my keys
7) The children will follow me everywhere
8) Seriously, it’s REALLY hot outside

Once again, I am not proud of this pathetic list of self-lies (and the list only gets worse). I’d like to blame this lethargy on February, and it’s cosmic hold on my life, turning me into a sloth beyond reason. However, if I ponder my dilemma a moment longer, dismissing the obvious power of astrology, I’m left with a different answer: My wonderfully obligation-free lifestyle of doing whatever I want, whenever I want has resulted in the dominant human nature trait of “couch potato” assuming control of my life. I am a lazy butt. Without deadlines, places to be, people to see, work shifts to get to, a fast, quick paced lifestyle to maintain, my true inner self is shinning through. And it’s pretty unattractive. It’s downright disgraceful.

I thought I was a person who had some seminal willpower, some inner drive to DO things. As it turns out, I mostly just did things that needed to be done. I used daily pressures and demands as my own personal chart of accomplishments, when they were nothing more than ordinary tasks. So now that I have all the freedom in the world to do things I want, I seem to be choosing the act of doing nothing. I do recognize the beauty of being able to do nothing, to just enjoy life, without fretting over the passage of time. But lets get real, you can’t just do nothing all the time and feel satisfied with that choice. It makes for a boring life and it makes me a boring person, period.

So, February, I hate to tell you this, but you have to go. NOW. I don’t care if you still have a few days left, you are no longer a welcome presence in my life. From this day forward, February no longer exists. This slow, hateful, lethargic month has cast its spell over me for the last time (yes I’m back to blaming all this on the second calendar month). When January ends, the month of Yebo!aury begins, until March steals in after 28ish or so days. Yebo! Is a lovely southern African expression, demonstrating a feeling such as; YES! Lets do it! Allright! Awsome! And yes, an exclamation mark must always follow such an awesome word as yebo!. So people, lets stop hiding in our huts/homes, lets stop blaming the cosmos for our excessive slothness, lets make a plan and stick to it. After all, it’s the month of Yebo!aury, and anything and everything should happen. So hit it. YEBO!