Time to imagine is a part of being human.
-- Ben Elton

Ben Elton was on TV last week talking about the importance of having time. Time to imagine, time to reflect -- time to be bored.

He said kids these days, they don't get that time anymore. You can't develop your reflective skills if you spend all your spare time watching re-runs of American Idol.

It was an interesting take. I grew up bored, was bored at school, had several jobs in which I was bored. I used to bemoan various of my day jobs to friends. 'Oh, if you didn't have a job,' I was frequently told, 'you'd be bored!'

'Dude,' I'd invariably reply, 'I'm bored now! It's the JOB that's BORING me!'

I've always resented parts of that life, & kicked myself for not being better equipped to do something active with my time. I could've learned French, for example (actually, in one job I actually did). I could've done some fiction writing at my desk (another tick, I confess). I could've snuck in philosophical tomes to read, artfully disguising them under 'internal memo' envelopes. ... That's a good idea, actually.

But I've always had a superstitious dread, too, that if I DID throw in the towel on the entire idea of a day-job, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. It's the very structure of the day job -- of getting up early, of having those stolen hours to make up for at night, of having that very job to fight & rail against -- that's resulted in the delicious thrill I get when I have time now.

Writing, obviously, is one thing I can do with my time, but writing only partly feeds the soul, I confess. Or maybe not the soul, but something else. The brain, maybe? I had a couple of discussions over the weekend with different writerly types in BrisVegas on the values of a day job -- even just part of a day job. Having that engagement, that process, that challenge, to liberate the flagging parts of the brain.

When I worked as a multimedia programmer, for example, I got to use the logic side of my brain & the pattern recognition. When I work as a project manager, I get to use strategy and solution-provision. These end up feeding back into writing, but they also stretch parts of my brain that writing isn't necessarily utilising to the fullest. Plus a day job can really push you beyond your comfort zone, to find new methods of dealing.

Day jobs do, however, tend to use up far too much of the day.

And anyhow, is writing simply a way of *avoiding* boredom? Is writing as respectful a past-time as reflecting? Is writing even MORE respectful? Or is 'time to reflect' yet another demand on our schedules, on top of writing?

I guess I'm wondering, too, whether you can watch American Idol AND be bored at the same time. It seems likely to me! And I've carried on entire day jobs effectively while being bored. Isn't the new generation adept at multi-tasking & attention-splitting? Are they also, perhaps, kinesthetic, allowing the movement of visual images across their retinas to soothe them into reflective ennui -- the same way us pre-TV kids would watch grass in the wind, or dogs scratching, or neighbours bickering?

Have we really lost our ability to reflect, or has its means -- like every damn thing from generation to generation -- merely changed shape?

Today I bought a staircase.

A staircase, yes, not a suitcase. Not something you buy every day (because it's bloody expensive), & in fact the spending of that much money all at once is still making me queasy. But I'd fallen down my old, sagging staircase one too many times & either it had to go or I did.

Which brings me to the issue of money (having it is good) &, indirectly, the issue of career & eventually, the issue of writing.

By my reckoning I've had about 4 career changes since leaving university in 1992. Four in 15 years implies an average of just less than 4 years in each career -- though this is misleading. Some have been much shorter & some I probably shouldn't be counting as careers at all ('a series of similar but dull jobs', might be better). Also, I'm just talking about day jobs, not writing. Writing is something I've not even called a 'career' until as recently as, oh, the last year or so.

The problem with my newest day-job career is that I like it. I feel kinda proud to be doing it. It's the first time I haven't hated the 'so, what do you do?' question at parties. I'm a project manager, I say, & this is the kinda project I'm working on & so on & so on. Heck, I even joined that professional body with the trivial pursuit evenings (I hope there aren't any more of those).

I know, I know, it's weird & unfashionable to like your day job, but alas, I always have been somewhere on or over the edge of fashion.

The last time I had a job I liked this much, they sacked me. Well, they actually closed down the entire company & sacked *all* of us, & I'd only been there 4 months anyhow, but still I took the entire thing personally. It does tend to leave a person with a lot of superstitious dread when that happens.

Still, here I am, enjoying another day job, all the while trying to have a writing career. And more than ever, 2007 has left me with the sense that I'm serving two masters. I fear that I'm not at my most effective in my day job if I'm up late the night before writing about evil clowns, say. I'm not sure I can effectively write most nights when I'm mentally exhausted from a day of talking & thinking & talking & occasionally turning out a paper about something. And also there's the eye strain.

Not that I'm complaining. There's solutions to be had, of course, & I'm simply in the process of ( choosing my own )

8.5 weeks of the post-gallbladder lifestyle, & I admit I don't feel so good. Apart from the preternatural tiredness, there is the unspecific malaise that has lead me, finally, to take the advice of someone who has done this trip before.

Most notably, I was advised to start taking Swedish Bitters.

Bitters tastes like nothing that should ever be swallowed. It's made, I've ascertained, from the ink of old pens found in abandoned school yards, boiled down and then mixed with diluted arsenic 'for flavour'. It leaves a sensation in the mouth as if you've swallowed a medium sized table top, pushing its way into the cells of your cheeks and sending you momentarily synesthetic.

It is terrible, rotten stuff, and should never be touched. UNLESS you have a liver that's struggling to keep up with its new responsibilities. Because actually it does remove the spatial grittines of a sluggish digestive system -- which is both good news and bad.

Of possibly more interest, the homeless guy by the Anglican church was there again this week, in my old stomping ground. Still as a statue, a green checked blanket on his knees, hands clasped in conciliation and resting in his lap. I visited my old workplace this week, after hours, and found a shell of a place. I thought I'd feel ... something. For the good times & the not-so-great. But my old desk, though evidently occupied, looked empty. And the desk I had before that one was dank, stuck through with the rubbish of a job someone hated (they must've, to have made such a mess, filled the spot with grimy bits of paper and personal accoutrement). It looked ... done. The whole place was done. And old and empty and new.

Sometimes, it's actually better if you go back. To find a place that has -- to your relief -- left you behind.