Unstructured Time

First Saturday in a very long time where I have nothing planned. For some this is a joy. For me...I go through stages.

Stage 1. Wake with a childlike anticipation of the day ahead.
Stage 2. Coffee, breakfast, e-mail checking, blog tooling, and web surfing.
Stage 3. The dreaded moment: what am I going to do today?
Stage 4. Multitude of choices come flooding in.

I could:

• organize my files (you know the ones containing all things from all times)
• use my blue Target vacuum to suck up lint from the corners of my apt. (I bought the machine under the illusion that it would change my life.)
  
• do yoga on my drafty floor
• write holiday cards
• read the newest issue of Bust
  
• read more of The Lovely Bones
• read any of the piled up New Yorker's that I haven't had time to crack
• read tarot cards
  
• go make copy of inmate's essay, buy him a thesaurus for Christmas (I'm guessing that this isn't the cheeriest time in CSP Solano), and tell him all sorts of positive things about his writing because the org I volunteer for says that often this sort of mentor/mentee relationship is one of the only positive things going on in their lives, that, in fact, in some cases, this is what they live for. . . and I am 4 weeks late with my response
  
• think more about the above, feel horribly guilty, and, yet, do nothing
• mull over the fact that I have huge debt that it will take me forever and three generations of my bloodline to pay off in full
• decide I'm going to have a great day despite the above
  
• recover from the 3 hours of balkan dancing I did last night on 82nd Street
• make a list of how the folk dance crowd has not changed since I was 8 years old. There is always:
  
• the guy wearing a sweatband around his head
• a super bouncy woman that makes it hard to tell if she is really, really good, or has absolutely no idea what she's doing
• a gentleman with a super-thick Eastern European mustache
• the man next to you in the line who tells you "you're on the WRONG FOOT...LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT..." to which you respond "I KNOW!!!" because you do know and him telling you just makes you more flustered and self-conscious
  
• an old Turkish couple
• the elderly women that has your hand in a death grip, so when you do a dance that involves collective arm-swinging, you fear your hand is going to go fly off
  
• several young women who have clearly been doing this for years and are amazing and you can't take your eyes off of them because of how they move and then you can't help but be jealous for how large a part dancing is in their lives and you know, as you have known many times before, that you need to move into or closer to a city so that you can do more things like this more often because it makes you feel more alive and more connected and more of everything and so you can be BETTER than them
  
• do collage the way I used to, filling a whole day that way--although I was high on pot then, so it was easier to stay in one spot and get lost in the edges of a polo cologne ad, the perfect fingernail on the perfect hand of the perfect man who has a perfect woman hanging on his perfect shoulder (when I was high, this sort of stuff didn't bother me)
  
• make my bed
• shower
• go grocery shopping
• work on my radio piece about Gogol Bordello that is going to catapult me into public radio fame. Even if it did, I would long, more than anything, for Saturdays like this one, with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and a whole host of choices about what to do with my time.

Stage 5. Count to three and just go, do...something....