Tuesday, August 08, 2006

What Do You Do During the Day?

is the most common question I'm asked, being unemployed and all. So I've decided to compile a list of the activities that have consistently occupied me over the past two years:
  • Read, read, read. And this answer seems to leave a lot of people blankly blinking at me. Since the graduate program in fiction, I've largely been reading non-fiction and I'm a slow reader. This fills up a lot of time and pseudo-fools me into thinking I'm still a student.
  • Listen to music the way I did in high school. You know, when listening to music was the *only* thing you were doing. This includes looking up lyrics, which I haven't done since high school. It's so easy now with the internet.
  • Find podcasts. A recent development since I've never been a big fan of listening to talk on the radio, but stand-up comedy has made this more appealing despite the lack visible gestures and expressions.
  • Exercise. These days it's an hour long hike or walk. Hikes to explore the area or walks to explore the fat-burning zone of exercise (I'm more familiar with the cardio side). The NPR podcasts "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me" and "All Songs Considered" serve these activities very well. I may never go back to running. I can only concentrate at most on the beat of songs when I run...very much a zoning out thing for me.
  • Photograph. Hikes lend themselves well to this activity. If the motivation to move my body isn't there, photography is a back-up. Later I can spend hours sitting on my butt, playing around with them in Photoshop.
  • Play video games. Grand Theft Auto is my current choice (I play until I beat them). The past two years have included Halo, Halo 2, Katamari Damacy, and various Nintendo classics. I don't play video games too much strictly because they're hyper-addictive for me.
  • Make dinner. Figure out what to make for dinner is more like it. Sometimes this is time consuming and underappreciated (not by Ryan...society in general), but of late, it's been easier and an inspiring chore since a recent subscription to a wine club. In fact, dinners have never been so creative in this household. They tell you the matching food and you're halfway there to figuring out the age-old question of "What's for dinner?" The beer book helps too. If you're having recipe block, decide dinner by your drink.
  • Blog. If you're here, you get it. It's the culmination of these hobbies, my interests, and my Web surfing...but more. You tell people you blog and they think it's your diary. Blogging, to me, is just as much about the community building and knowledge sharing as it is staring at your own navel.
  • Etc. Crosswords, Sudoku, teach myself stuff like Chess or knitting, swim, find the lowest possible price online for something as simple as a vegetable peeler specifically because I have the time and not because I'm cheap.
I actually find it hard to be bored.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:08 PM

    Come to Six Flags! Since they may not exist anymore. They've finally beat out Cedar Point in roller coasters!
    http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_4057143

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous3:00 PM

    Knitting, did I see knitting in that mix?!? You should visit www.knitty.com for cool patterns.

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  3. You *did* see knitting in that mix, though I never actually completed a project. I just caught up in the motion of rows (which might be counted as a scarf). But I feel revisitation coming on despite the paradox (in my mind) of knitting and San Diego.

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  4. Anonymous7:02 PM

    Dude, total paradox. Do Californians knit bikinis? I bet there are some doing just that, as we speak.

    ReplyDelete