Free Time

I occasionally receive comments referring to how much time I must have on my hands, often after a rant has been made public. It may be phrased wistfully (“I wish I had as much free time as you must have.”), as a statement (“You have way too much free time.”), or as a question (“How much free time do you have?”) I can only surmise that those of you who read these think I sit in my little (rubber) room with nothing to do but to while away the empty hours of my barren existence writing messages that only my delusional psyche can believe anyone would care a rat’s patootie about.

Au contraire.

I am as busy as anyone, busier than some. I have found a few ways to free up a few minutes each week to keep in touch with you and I am willing to share these tips, solely in the interest of camaraderie, as a way of improving the discourse. Some of these will make more sense to some of you than to others. Such is life. Please feel free to use them, so that you, too, may find some small fragment of your busy life available. Please join our already credited correspondents in this quest, instead of remaining the Internet parasite that you are, entertaining yourself vicariously through the efforts of others.

Primary among the ways I create free time is by not wasting any of it wondering where everyone else gets their free time. Life’s too short. I have achieved the balance I currently cherish through scrupulously avoiding any interest in how anyone else spends their time, or how much of it is free. I find it simple. I don’t care. Really. Whether you spend your time giving massages to the inhabitants of your local leper colony or spend it fantasizing about yourself, Nicole Kidman, and Catherine Zeta-Jones in a tub full of whipped cream is all the same to me. (Female readers may feel free to substitute Tom Cruise and Antonio Banderas in the above sentence.)

Another time-saver is proof reading, or rather, the lack of it. I have deduced from reading what comes in to the Home Office that many of you have already mastered this one, so I won’t spend much time on it.

You, too, can have enough free time to write tedious messages that only your enormous ego allows you to think are entertaining. With sufficient discipline and time management, you can write stultifying prose, banal poetry, and trite descriptions with the best (?) of them. Who knows? Maybe some day someone will tell you, “I wish I had half the free time you must have.”

Every journey begins with a single step, Grasshopper.