I can give you anything but time
Lately, or more specifically, recently, when my boyfriend Tony and I canceled a weekend trip and then spent the entire weekend feeling thrilled and like we had gotten away with something, I have been thinking about how to recreate that feeling of what might be called recovered time. Like, you can’t just make plans clearly knowing you will cancel them. You have to be fully prepared to do something, but then at the last minute (or near enough) you have to cancel it. At the time you are making these plans, you really do want to go, or think you do, but then as the days go on and it gets closer, you start to wonder why you ever made plans to leave the house, when staying home and reading on the couch is truly the most pleasurable thing you can think of. Tony, for example, buys tickets to concerts regularly and then finds himself not going at the last minute, when the idea of leaving the house, well, you get the picture. He can also rationalize this by saying that he contributed money to the artist anyway, so it isn’t really a total bust.
We also do this every year when we excitedly buy tickets to the film festival in Chatham only to find ourselves not really wanting to go out every single night over like five days. Last year, in fact, we only went to a single film, but this was because I suddenly got a terrible case of the flu. Something like that doesn’t count as recovered time, since I spent the entire time wishing I wasn’t sick. This year, we saw two films at the film festival in a single day and, thus thrilled, felt quite sure we’d see more, but, alas, we didn’t and (I’m not going to lie) thoroughly enjoyed watching TV each night instead.
It's not that we don’t like to make plans and then follow through with them. It’s just that if the plans involve any inconvenience at all (driving, wearing clothes that are not pajamas), they slowly and then very quickly seem hardly worth it. And I’m not talking about plans with friends because we really do try to keep those (but if they get canceled anyway, well…). Mike Birbiglia once said, “My wife and I hate going to parties, but we love driving away from parties,” and I feel that this gets at the same sort of thing. The energy (or lack thereof) is familiar. Sometimes you have to do things only to appreciate the time that you’re not doing things. Something like that.
It's probably something to do with relief, which, let’s be honest, is a perfect emotion. I love doing yoga every morning, but there are times when I’m doing yoga that I’m actually picturing myself after yoga, drinking coffee and reading on the couch. And then once I’m drinking coffee and reading on the couch I feel extra content because I had to do something challenging to get there. And it’s possible that if I just did that without the yoga, it would not be as good. This is somewhat related to what I was talking about above, though maybe I have branched off into something else here. I sometimes wish that my entire day consisted of the yoga/coffee/reading portion and nothing else. And yet, how could I appreciate that part without doing all the rest?
Yesterday I thought about how, when I was training (briefly) for a 5k race in June, how much I loved coming back after a run and how that was really the best part. Was there a way to get to that part without the running? Probably not. And then, minutes later, strangely, I got an email about how registration for the race I did (which I was certain would be my last) was open for next June, and there was a discount if we signed up now. And I thought about that feeling after running. And I wondered if running was worth it. And I thought that I might sign up and pay now and then not actually run when June came around again, and I would have that recovered time. Would I treat myself to this now? I am already too aware of what I’m doing. I can’t set out to recover time. I have to somehow decide that I will certainly run again in June and then maybe I will, or maybe I will wake up, do yoga, and then drink coffee and read on the couch and think about how the day might go differently. I will leave this up to my future self, however.