The curse of free-time

When I was working full time and going to school full time, my schedule looked like this:

Sunday 8-4 at work
Monday 7-4
Tues 7-4
Wed 7-4
Thursday 8:30-4:30 treating patients at the clinic
Friday 8:30-5:30 class
Sat 8:30-6:00 class

Repeat ad infinitum.

This was exhausting, frustrating, and generating a fairly large amount of burnout in me, which manifested itself in a blatant disregard for paperwork, extended lunch breaks, and a long period of time where I shorted work by an hour a day, showing up at eight instead of seven, etc. I would sit at my computer for hours, looking at screenwriting blogs, and writing what turned out to be an eighty page workbook for addicts, complete with references to masturbation and acid.

School was similarly neglected: I would generally study for about 30 minutes to an hour before an exam, and do the homeworks the day they were due. Often, I would pull the old, "oops, I emailed the wrong document" trick to buy myself one more day. My grades did not reflect my intense laziness, not because of any intelligence, but because of a well-honed craftiness at cutting corners.

Good times.

In the mornings, I would get up at five or six and write for an hour or two, completing a screenplay called "Recovering Leonard." In the evenings, after school or work, I would go out to the house (pre-moving in) and paint it, room by room, trim by trim. It was, without a doubt, the busiest time in my life.

Now, things are very, very different. I get up with the baby, and spend about three hours every morning just reading novels, blogs, magazines, comic books, etc. I do a little light cleaning. Maybe I write, maybe I don't, working in whirlwind twenty page spurts, rather than a better, consistant five page a day schedule.

Three days a week, I treat patients and attend classes. My procrastination is the same; I continue to study for tests a half hour before they are administered, and I never, ever do homework before the day it is due, whether it is a two page book assignment, or a thirty page business plan. Thank goodness acupuncture is more of a doing thing than it is an academic pursuit.

I just finished Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris. It was good enough, a quick read, but after something really fantastic like Oryx and Crake, it felt kinda phoned in to me. Now, I am making my way through the Absolute Sandman book, one comic chapter at a time, so that I can savor it. I am also reading Lisey's Story by Stephen King, which is interesting enough, so far. She substitutes the word "smucking" for "fucking," and King is making up more words than usual, but you can tell things will get pretty interesting after the first hundred pages or so.

Right. So. Here's the thing: I think free time is poisonous.

My wife and I live in an odd, secluded world together, constantly attending to the baby (good) and constantly dealing with each other (bad). Our daily grind, which used to consist of dealing with sixty drug addicts, now consists of basic housework and harping on one another. Hobbies seem like herculean efforts, and whether it is a baking experiment gone wrong, or a sticky place in the novel, their little challenges seem insurmountable. I think that we are drowning in all the time we have to do nothing. In contrast, business generates more business, and perhaps even happiness.

That said, the novel is at one of its fun points, for me. Jack just bought himself some lighter fluid, a screw gun, a crossbow, and a reciprocating saw, and he is going to liberate a little girl from a very bad police officer. The cop may or may not live, but it is going to become a turning point in the story, where Jack starts taking control of situations that are thrown at him. I have 164 pages, now. I have about forty thousand words to go, which is about two hundred more pages.

Here's a little snippet (which is, as usual, improperly formatted and without italics):

15

There was a whimper from under his desk. His eyes snapped open, the airport melting away from him. Jack looked around the room, trying to locate who or what was making the sound. Easy now, Jacky boy. Remember what the lady told you.

Another sniveling cry, this time from directly between his legs. Jack looked down, his breath starting to catch in his throat.

The little girl couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. She was sitting on the floor in front of Jack’s legs. Her sandy blond hair lay in wet tangles that clung to the sides of her face like moss on a rotting log. She was crying harder, now, and a thin rivlet of snot poured out of her left nostril. She was a pretty little girl, Jack thought, and something terrible was about to happen to her. He could already feel his heart knocking on the inside wall of his chest. A thought, clean and simple, raced through his mind: I do not want to see this. Then: The storm is over, and everything clears up.

Jack shoved the chair back, and sat down in front of the crying girl. Focus on your third eye, Jack. Focus on your yintang. He breathed in, and felt the space directly between his eyes, the spot where the bullet had penetrated him. He breathed out, and reached towards the crying little girl. He breathed in, felt his hands pass through her, the air slightly heavier, like a light fog. Breathed out, closed his eyes, darkness. Jack breathed in, and he opened his eyes. He was sitting in a darkened cellar. Next to him, he heard a quiet whimper.

16

Jack leapt to his feet, and panic tickled at the back of his neck, causing all of his hair to stand on end. The whimpering continued from below. Okay. Chill. Focus. Breathe. Where am I? He thought. Jack put his hands out in front of him, and reached out blindly into the blackness, hoping to find a dangling string connected to a lightbulb. There was nothing but cobwebs. He strained his eyes against the darkness, trying to find some crack of light, some form. Again, her soft little whimper next to him. Can she hear me? Of course not. This isn’t real. He stood, rooted to the ground, breathing. Okay. Chill. Focus.

From somewhere to the right, Jack heard a long, loud scrape. Then a rustling sound, almost like a peeling. Suddenly, four cracks of light appeared in the wall, revealing a door. Then, he heard the unmistakable sound of a key in a lock. At this, the little girl’s whimpers became a breathless wail.

From behind the wall, a man’s voice growled: “Little kitty, little kitty, don’t you cry.”

A door swung open, revealing the sillouhette of a large framed man. His pot belly looked like a pregnant teardrop, ready to burst into a stream. Jack couldn’t see his face; only a blackness superimposed on light. Potbelly lurched into the room, and stood over the child. He clicked a flashlight on, and she was illuminated in pale, halogen light. Her racoon eyes overfilled with black, oily tears that mixed with days old makeup in a small stream down her face.

Potbelly clicked the button, drenching them in darkness. Jackson heard an oily clicking sound.

The flashlight clicked back on, and Potbelly was holding something long and obsidean. He poked the girl in the face with it, making a loud, hollow thud. She began to wail in a low, keening voice.

The flashlight clicked off. Her wails became muffled, and there was a rustling noise. She let out a small gargle, followed by another muffled scream.

The flashlight clicked on. Potbelly had shoved the long barrel into her mouth, and she held it between lips like a popsickle, or a (oh god don’t think of that, he thought).

The flashlight clicked off. There was a long silence, with only her occasional sucking of saliva so she could take a breath.
A flash of lightning, followed by a thunderous boom. For a split second, Jack saw little flowers of light floating in front of him. His heart broke, in that moment, for the child. He could still see her sniveling under his desk, and for an odd moment, Jack felt like he was floating, somewhere between his office and this dungeon, simultaneously in both places, and in neither.

Jack breathed in, Jack breathed out, and Jack stayed.