Where do the dead hours go when we grow up? Maybe they really die, they are extinguished as a protected species. I have the feeling that when we win years we lose hours. The past accumulates while the present wan and thinness until it stays in the bones of the obligations. They seemed eternal, on weekends, a carousel of plans, friends and events. Now the little free time I have is going to manage life. Being a functional adult implies a series of bureaucratic procedures certainly exhausting. You have to work, make the purchase, clean the house, fix the cistern, … I have reached a point in life where there is no time to lose, in a cruelly literal sense.
Some say that Madrid has, a chaotic city that pushes you to rush and stress. But I do not agree. Because in all medium -sized towns and cities there is a job, a broken cistern and a income statement waiting for the present. It’s not Madrid, it’s you. It is adult life and the way you manage time. In fact, I believe that the frantic character of Madrid is not a defect but a virtue, and it is not new. That this city never stops and that is the most beautiful thing it has. That Madrid is movement, a mysteriously tidy chaos. The issue is what you do with that chaos, how you order it and what you prioritize.
Not everyone prioritized the same. Lately I find it impossible to keep some friends, who have gone from having the agenda of a Nini a o. A colleague with which he previously improvised a plan without further ado than a call to the telephone, now needs to schedule the appointments weeks in advance.
You propose coffee and take you a Google Calendar Full of colors and annotations, that more than a calendar seems that a social tetris. “Impossible this month,” he says. The fact is that my friend is pointed to ceramics already pole dance That is why not all life is work. It passes one in two weekends outside the city, in escapes “to disconnect.” He always has a table in fashion restaurants and tickets for concerts from here to 2027. Plan your leisure better than my job.
The worst is not how difficult it is to stay, but how easy it is to make up. Because at least he cancels you with, I don’t know what stories of listening to his body and prioritizing. Before improvised plans, now improvises seedlings. On the recommendation of his psychologist, yes: he is selfish disguised as mental health.
Its case is no exception, but the example of a massive trend. Every time I see more people who enlive stress as if it were a flattering new jacket. That looks hurry and work addiction as if it gave some kind of social prestige. As an achievement that vibrates on your mobile every few seconds. This labor dynamic has moved to the rest of his life. For them, rest has been replaced by leisure. For going to the restaurant, the work or the fashion store. The important thing is what they do, not who they do. A capitalist vision apply to friendships, valuing people according to their marginal contribution. They do not look for plans but events. They have no colleagues, they have contacts.
I don’t want to become those people, so I’m planning to improvise more. For a few months I have taken the mess very seriously, I am an activist of hedonism. Delete in him Google Calendar Even keeping parties and thus bridges are a surprise. I cleared my agenda of events, it is not going to be that I get one in the last minute and I have to say no. I go to neighborhood bars and not fashionable premises that require reservation. To popular festival concerts which I can go without buying entrance. At work, I have the ambition just and at home, procrastine the tasks to the limit of responsibility. I try a lot to be a vague, and it’s ugly that I say it, but I get phenomenal. I am improving the ability to improvise, to mix groups, to make friends. And yes, time also escapes me for the sink, dead hours also die. Life, in Madrid and Soria, is chaos. And you have to learn to order it, according to each other’s priorities.
