Being One of the Daytime People

A number of years ago, smack in the middle of my days as a 9 to 5 drone, I woke up supremely happy for no reason I could explain. This feeling of euphoria lasted for hours until it forcibly hit me why I was so blissful: I had dreamed the night before that it was the last day of work before summer vacation. While my body labored over emails and paperclips a hidden part of my brain was waiting in anticipation for when I would be free to sleep in for days at a time, read for hours on end, and loiter about the world in general. My despair on realizing this was nothing but a dream was complete and, I think, the catalyst for my present path. For I now find myself, for the first time in 14 years, with a free summer.

Free time is a funny thing. You dream of it, you yearn for it, and when you finally rearrange your whole life for it, you are overwhelmed with guilt. Every morning I watch Eric leave for work knowing he will grind away for eight hours at a job that is slowly stealing his genius, while I lark about like a house wife with no children and a sloppy work ethic. The guilt drives me out of bed early, so at least I present the illusion of an industrious person. I might feel less guilt if I were not nursing the suspicion that Eric is better cut out for this life than I am. With three months of free time he would probably record an album, write the all-American novel, and learn to knit. I’ll be lucky to escape with the Spanish vocabulary of a five year old.

I truly believe that people are not meant to sweat their lives away at unrewarding, creativity-killing jobs, and yet as I go to coffee shops, book stores, and parks in the middle of the day I wonder, why aren’t all these people in my way at work? Are they rich or just lazy? Even though I am now one of the daytime people, I find myself passing judgment on them. I want to throw muffins at the women dining next to me giving air kisses and discussing how to tax their nanny’s salaries. Such people should not exist outside of fiction I would never read. And why are there so many people in line at the post office at two in the afternoon? I know my tenure will be over soon so I feel free to criticize at will, just as other people who are out of work, on vacation, serving me coffee, or maybe just work nights are wondering why the red-headed girl with green glasses has enough time to eat cookies and drink coffee for the fourth day in a row while they eat cookies and drink coffee for the fourth day in a row. We should all wear tags with our occupations or at least our intentions so we know who to scorn and who to respect. “Aspiring artist” would get a friendly nod, as would “bartender” or “down on my luck,” while “married to money” or “lacking in ambition” would get my unjustified scorn.

 

Things I love about not working in the summer:

 

Eating at restaurants that are usually too crowded to bother with

Finishing a book on the same day I start it

Eating lunch with a different friend everyday

Listening to the Writer’s Almanac

Spending every afternoon at Lulu’s eating cookies and drinking sugary coffee

Being the first person at the library service sales

 

Things I don’t like:

 

Worrying that people think I’m a rich Carmel housewife

Being poor and still spending a lot of money

Putting on weight because I spend every afternoon at Lulu’s eating cookies and drinking sugary Coffee

Guilt