Dolce Far Niente

3:45 PM Wednesday, January 4, 2006

[Could it actually pay the bills?]

I'm sitting at an Espresso Roma table on a sunny post-storm Wednesday, deciding what to do next. It's not that I have nothing to do. Quite the contrary. There's much, much housekeeping, and there's bill-paying, depositing checks to cover those bills, answering voicemail messages, reorganizing the reams of paper at my workplace, and lots of lots of other work related to my day job (the one that, at least in principle, generates those checks that are waiting to be deposited.) And last, but not least (although the Puritan in me would consider them least) recreation and art. Under the last category I place blogging, although as far as I know they don't teach it yet at art school.

And, as I clarified my priorities on paper using my favorite mind-mapping technique, I made a very interesting discovery. I don't want to do any of those things. I don't want to do zip. Zilch. Nada. Diddly-squat. Jack-poop. Shoom davar. In other words, elegant Italian words, what I do want to do is dolce far niente. I've had a lot of practice at it since I finished my Christmas/Hanukkah shopping.

And thereby I discovered my theme for my next blogpost, which is this one, the one you're reading, assuming that anyone is reading it. (Not you, Mom. You don't need to read this. Go out, see some people, don't waste your time on the computer reading this far niente stuff. You would not like it, because it's all about wasting time. Sort of.) And that leads to the philosophical question. Can dolce far niente be productive? Can niente be a Thing to be Gotten Done? Obviously, by definition, nothing is no thing, so it cannot be gotten done. End of debate? Well, no. Although nothing is not a Thing, dolce far niente might actually be something. Could it be a form of recreation? Very probably. Could it even be an art? Very possibly. Could it actually pay the bills? For me, no, but for some people… Yes, there are folks out there who have direct deposit and online bill paying, who work at jobs where far niente pays exceedingly well. Since this is not a political blog, I will stop here.

Update: 2 hours after I wrote this I was working again. The Puritan won.

| Technorati tags: Leisure Productivity GTD Niente