people who do nothing

Chuang Tzu
Albert Einstein
William James
E.M. Cioran
Shakyamuni Buddha

I am utterly bored.

I don't have any money though, just bed and board.

I want to do something.

http://www.biroco.com/journal.htm

I find this an interesting question. In the 90s there was a trend for 'doing nothing', it fitted into the 'lounge' movement, The Idler magazine, etc. In Japan right now there's a movement called Slow Life which is about making the best of economic slowdown, making your life ecologically sustainable, becoming post-industrial, enjoying nature, etc. There's also a movement of 'Freeters', people who work the bare minimum in order to have the free time they need to pursue hobbies or just coast. The Japanese called people who stay at home with their parents late into life hikikomori -- 'the barricaded ones'. Hikkies (as they're called for short) overlap with Freeters: sometimes they have an undemanding job on the side which brings in just enough money for them to pay their mobile phone bills and buy new Playstation games.

There are marked differences in attitude between, say, Japan and China, and continental Europe and US/UK. In China and US/UK, people tend to work very hard even when given the opportunity not to. Work is seen as the locus of meaning and social connection. It has a value in itself. Continental Europe and (increasingly) Japan share a certain 'post-work' mentality. There's a marked and growing interest in quality of life issues. Pleasure (like eating well) comes before profit, and life is a higher value than work. Post-work societies are 'post-industrial'. They're also post-protestant.

I can't post (and posting is work in itself) without mentioning my mate Pat Kane and his forthcoming book 'The Play Ethic'. His blog, Play Journal, is here. Pat is full of interesting ideas about how Play is replacing Work in post-industrial societies.

I don't mean to say that Japan was ever protestant. But some equivalent of what we know as 'the Protestant Work Ethic' has existed there, and they're now getting over it. There's a marked generation gap. Older Japanese bemoan the laziness of the young, but also indulge them and spoil them and give them access to their savings.

Of course, eating well isn't cheap. Back in March/April I experimented with less office work (though for me reading/watching DVDs is half-work) but couldn;t do it economically: I fucking NEED consumer goods (books, DVDs). So fricking sue me. Living with your parents is fucked up. This is one of those topics where I become completely authoritarian-irrational. But my parents used to take in language students from all over Yurp and East Asia, so there's an empirical nub to this.

The French 35-hour thing is interesting. This weekend I watched Pialat's 'Police' -- about a driven guy. I feel stale if I'm not doing anything, though that needn't include office work.

People who lose money by doing nothing v. People who earn money by doing nothing.

People whose life is shortened by doing nothing v. People whose life is prolonged by doing nothing.

People who evolve, flower and become happy doing nothing v. People who wilt and get miserable doing nothing.

And don't tell me 'it just feels longer'.

Thats just me, tho.

Nabisco, you have had mail. What's up?

But thanks for giving me the chance to clear that up!

Mark, that's *not* the seam I was digging! From what I've heard, your folks have these things called principles, okay? I wasn't just talking about media people; any desirable profession will allow you to "experience" work without paying you for it, and it's almost compulsory to have completed a tour of such duty before getting a real job.

I am completely incapable of pursuing my creative interests while simultaneously working a full-time day job (waiting tables/bartending or construction for me). Actually, I'm almost incapable of combining either work or creativity with an active social life. I can do one out of three well at a time. Maybe if I was into something that I could work on for a little while at a time every night, but if I'm going in the darkroom it has to be for a 12-hour stretch minimum or I think I'm wasting my time.

But yeah, me too :)

Does anyone have a cattle prod handy?

I'm writing about John Cage right now and I'm finding it really difficult because so much of what he says/does seems contradictory. Not that there's necessarily something wrong with being contradictory but it makes him hard to write about. If his point is 'there's no such thing as silence/nothing is random/there's beauty and structure in everything' he seems like a traditional romantic, a naive aesthete, just a bit of an extenstion of the early nineteenth century. But if his point is to create a new kind of random language that really shakes up our way of perceiving the world, or somehow gets away from structure or the self or makes one exist entirely in the present, it's kind of undercut by his statements that people always make sense of things and find aesthetics in them etc. I don't get it!

I read The Book of Nothing a few years back and loved it.

http://web.mit.edu/stclair/www/diamond.html

Section VII. Great Ones, Perfect Beyond Learning, Utter no Words of Teaching
Subhuti, what do you think? Has the Tathagata attained the Consummation of Incomparable Enlightenment? Has the Tathagata a teaching to enunciate?
Subhuti answered: As I understand Buddha's meaning there is no formulation of truth called Consummation of Incomparable Enlightenment. Moreover, the Tathagata has no formulated teaching to enunciate. Wherefore? Because the Tathagata has said that truth is uncontainable and inexpressible. It neither is nor is it not. Thus it is that this unformulated Principle is the foundation of the different systems of all the sages.

...and the Heart Sutra:

http://www.worldzen.org/sutras01.html

O Sariputra, form is no other than emptiness,
Emptiness no other than form.
Form is emptiness, emptiness form.
The same is true of feeling, thought, impulse and consciousness.

I think that Suzy brings up a completely different point - there's a big difference between "people who do nothing" and "people who have the leisure to be able to work for free". I don't know; in my experience, I find the former far more objectionable. It doesn't seem fair if you have to compete with the latter, but you know, that's the genetic lottery. Some people were lucky enough to be born with rich parents, some people were lucky enough to be born with brains. If you have brains, you can *choose* what field you work in, and you can either choose to work in a field where brains are more important than the ability to intern without a paycheck, or you can carry on scraping by and complaining about the unfairness of the world.

But, anyway, I don't want to derail the thread. The weird thing is, on this sort of front, I actually appreciate Joe and his principals, even though they function in inverse in practice. Joe insists on getting paid for his exhibitions, and he insists on getting paid a fair rate so he doesn't lose money. Thing is, lots of "starving artists" don't have the leisure to call the bluff that he does - they have to accept an insultingly small fee because they can't not work. Joe says that by enforcing this policy, he is ensuring that other artists will be treated by the same policy. I'm not sure about that; there's a part of me that thinks, well, that fee went to Joe and now it won't go to a "starving artist" - but then again, realisticly, that money wouldn't have gone to an artist, it would have gone to some trendy gallery schmuck. I don't know.

I know what suzy means, but working for free doesn't necessarily fall into any of these categories, and the idea that parents subsidize it is a big assumption. Since graduation I've written I guess three articles for free, and a couple for a token sum -- but none of these were for the mainstream media.
I don't think the film mag Vert1go pays *any* of its contributors, since it barely scrapes along. No mainstream mag would run the kind of articles you get in it. But I did it on my own time and get zero from my parents, it was more or less for the craic. Given the immensely exploitative nature of most media gigs, principles are for the rich -- notoriously, left-leaning publications hardly pay.
Obv I wouldn't work for a profit-making organization for free, though.

He moved home now to "write" and "think things over." He plays in or two half-assed, emo-cringey bands; writes screenplays in which the hero suspiciously always is a scrawny overhaired indie "hero" who looks uncannily like him and winds up romancing the same exact bespectacled emo-geek-girl that he was rendezvousing with (in his dreams) that semester (down to the details that she chooses him over her rawk-star b/f). His father financed the short he shot last summer, managed to get it professionally edited, etc. He only has to ask to become a part of his father's television kingdom, and it will be handed to him, just like he had to only ask to get the second iMac laptop he only wanted for the new editing software he bought with his credit card after he crashed his car and got a new one last spring etc etc. Ask and it shall be given....

His best friend is the son of a prominent EnBeeCee producer, also from my class (and another ex-friend), who's father is helping him set-up his own production company, fully financing it and whatnot. Oh, btw, the ex-friendship part has nothing to do with any of this (that's related to pre-graduation drama!).

Am i a trustfarian/trustfundista too? I'd want to know what Suzy/Enrique think, etc. After I graduated I worked a shit job for two months, which managed to pay my rent, but then went through horrid relationship drama, was being supported by various foax at home - if not one, than the other, and spent all of my time and energy for three months on a relationship/correspondence/writing "issue" (that turned out to be 184 pages or so in Word, the culmination of 5 years in a relationship gone to fucking pieces) - does that qualify as "nothing" (probably fodder for another thread)? I'd like to think I was "spending time on intense suffering which was necessary for mental reconstitution in P-BS [post-betrayal state] " at the time, but that may be the inner drama queen in me whining (I was ILXing profusely at the time, a not-unconnected happenstance i fear).

Then I spent a month or so applying again, before starting yes an "internship." An internship at a small cozy production company, I was repeatedly told that would be necessary to "get my foot in the door" in the industry I wanted to work in someday (someday SOON). I spent three months there. I tried telling my family every other day that yes yes now I am going to be hired etc, that this is the way "the system works," " the INDUSTRY works" etc.

There were "no job offerings," recently (like, Thursday), the guy I am friends with at the company let me know that they purposely want to choose interns from out of town, since "then they can't go anywhere and we can make them our slave," - it slipped out, before he remembered that I had been the intern last year. Not that I hadn't already figured out by last Thursday that they never had any intention to hire me in the first place! That's the way the industry works, (exploits, sustains itself), etc. Duh, okay, alright.

After that I spent three more months applying to jobs, every single day (and "wasting" time on a certain internet message board on which I hardly ever really corresponded with the other members guesswhichone, etc it was pretty miserable!) - I sent out more than three hundred fifty resumes, went on twenty-nine interviews, kept trying to procure temp employment (even interviewing at hot dog stands - which i was apparently unqualified to work at). If someone wanted to ask what I was doing, I felt like saying "I'm a professional interviewee" -> the real answer would be more like professionally consuming myself with anxiety. I was still being supported bu my family at age twenty-three (which is VERY "shameful" for an "ASIAN CHILD" coming from a family with such "HIGH STANDARDS" of "OVER-ACHIEVEMENT-YOUR-SOS-AND-SO-WAS-A-SALUTATORIAN-WHAT-THE-FUCK-ARE-YOU-HOW-WERE-YOU-BORN-HERE" etc etc) and hated myself/world/"the INDUSTRY"/ my-apparent-lack-of-breasts-which-would-propell-my-professional-plans for it. Was I a "trustfarian" ? I remember asking, after seeing the issue being debated on a certain ilxor thread.

Then I got a job at a faux-management company which lasted four months, during which time a close relative began to die, which made it easier for family members to take pity enough on me to bail me out when the job ended and I needed rent $ again. And just last week I found a job which is walking-distance away (a big deal if the gas you need is 2.69 a gallon), in which I will temporarily be able to support myself - if I work 50 hours a week, which I somewhat intend to! - while commencing the interviewing (for "something better") again. Make no mistake though, the mark of self-loathing due to having to accept any amount of $, if only for a small amount of time relatively speaking (one year or so) from home has already been made, since I can't help feeling guilt/anger/failure etc etc after it was instilled in me at a small age that "not having a job " = "shame" = "what is the WORLD going to think of us, the poor hapless parents of a nondoctor / ne'er-do-well u poxy fule!" etc which admittedly has to do with an AZN/immigrant mindset (survivalist vs. thrivalist).

So basically, even though I have received some $ from home in between working waste-of-time jobs/slave-labor-4-free for the past calendrical year, i still do not feel like I have been "doing nothing." Whether or not I am a trustfarian I'll let the denizens of this thread decide, being fully aware that it's in no way being used as a pejorative here, and that this overlong post's pre-emptive defensiveness more has to do with the fact that it's 3:33 AM here and not something anyone else said or didn't say (in regards to doing nothing!)!! Yeah yeah, struck a personal nerve, et al.

DO I RESENT THE EX-FRIENDS I described up there though? Honestly?

No. Not really - if I had to be honest with myself...

Because I know that if i was in their position, I would be doing the same thing (the same nothing?) . In some industries, it's almost essential to have the luxury of good-connections which enable you a period to "do nothing," in which you'll (hopefully, if you have any self-discipline) eventually produce something.

This doesn't answer the question of the free-labor/slave-internship thing though, forwhich I'm afraid I have no answer. At least I got a free trip to Vegas out of all that shit (but i'm not supposed to think of that, since then i remember all the grocery $ in gambling there that I lost that i'd been saving all that time).

Okay I have to go to bed now to get up in time for the 11-hour day ahead of me - which I still prefer to sitting at home and ILXing, to be honest w/ you. =) TS: one form of nothing vs another ?

while searching for either a "people who are not john larroquette" thread*, or, failing that, a "people who look like other people" thread, i came across this oldie but a goodie thread instead.

there are so many interesting things about this thread. in no particular order:

what people mean by "doing nothing". for some it is an embarrassment, for others it's the goal. a temporary state, or the default. a trust funded period of hedonism or a financial disaster, knowing one must walk the line. a guided rope back to family who have money, a tightrope over angry piranhas waiting to get you.

i liked this comment by nabisco (unsurprising):

I mean, it's funny: the whole appeal of being, say, a successful writer is that you get to have a job, technically, but in point of fact you're doing exactly what you'd be doing if you were doing "nothing" (i.e., writing and not really being able to pay your bills).

this aligns very closely with my own experience of "doing nothing", which i've been doing for about 15 months now. my version is on the self-funded / financial disaster part of the spectrum. my form of doing nothing is about working on the things that i care about, creatively. if i can ever make the amount of money that it takes to live, i will have succeeded in making "nothing" my job. at that point i will point to the sky like albert pujols after crossing the plate after a home run, and say "nabisco otm".

it almost seems like there are two axes of doing nothing? the financial (poverty vs trust fund) and the motive (using all the free time to achieve a goal vs resting/recharging)? maybe there's also a third (takes giant bong rip) -- time. the length of time doing nothing. an argument against including time is that it's partly a function of the financial situation. my time is almost up.

jerry the nipper was heavily otm here:

Doing nothing is fine providing you have plenty of friends to do nothing with.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, June 28, 2004

*
https://i.imgur.com/ExbP1vX.jpg
Ali Sardar Jafri / not John Larroquette

there are quite a few posts on this thread from ilxors are still around! i would love to hear from some of those people, if anyone wants to share, about how they feel about doing nothing these days.

"I tend to goof off watching tv and the internet for days at a time, when I could be drumming up new business that would put me in higher cotton."

That's a very good point. A few years before this thread began I worked as a freelance writer - before getting a full-time writing job - and the actual writing was great fun. However as a freelancer I had to continually sell myself, and it was a lot easier to do that if you live in London, or the regional equivalent of London. And that's not cheap.

Besides which the idea of doing nothing makes me feel uncomfortable, not because I'm a puritan but because life is like the conveyor belt at the end of Toy Story 3. If you stop moving you'll meet a sticky end. You'll end up like Chance the Gardener from Being There, but in real life. In real life he wouldn't have ended up as a potential presidential candidate, he would have been dumped by a bus stop and used as a public urinal by drunks. As an idler you'll eventually have an unexpected bill that you can't pay, or your parents will die, or an unknown unknown will get you. There's a phrase for that kind of thing, isn't there? The Red Queen hypothesis, or something. The idea that if you don't go on the offensive you'll be overwhelmed by people who do.

Money is an insulator against the world's ills. But money is ablative, it burns away. That's why I have always had a certain amount of respect for posh rich people of the old school. They managed to preserve money across generations. One of their idiot offspring could so easily have fucked it up, or they could have been unlucky, as in e.g. Luchino Visconti's The Leopard. I suppose that above a certain level of wealth it takes genuine effort to screw things up, but that's a lot of wealth.

I'm suddenly reminded of an article I read in The Guardian a while back. It was a "gosh how lucky I have been" piece from one of the columnists who revealed that she had interned for Vogue in New York, before deciding on a whim to move to London and find a job writing for a major national newspaper. The "what a charmed life I have led" narrative was undercut by the fact that she obviously had a tonne of cash. Until this moment I assumed it was by Hadley Freeman, but she points out that she didn't intern for Vogue:
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/nov/18/exclusive-fashion-world-new-vogue-change

"When I was 22 I got my dream job offer: to work as an assistant at a major American fashion magazine. I was going to be independent and, I sang to myself, working with the most creative people in the world. And then I met my prospective boss. “So your annual salary will be $17,000 (£13,000),” she said breezily. The average salary in New York at that point was just under $50,000 (£38,000).
“I - I don’t know if I can live in the city on that,” I said. “Most of our staff,” she said, looking up at me, “have private incomes.” I left her office sadder, wiser and unemployed."

And yet according to this article she graduated from Oxford and moved to Paris for a year before returning to the UK to walk into a job in The Guardian, so how did she end up in New York? And why the fuck am I cyber-stalking Hadley Freeman? She was one of the few columnists on that newspaper who was any good.

hard disagree

I had a nice run during the Great Recession, 2008-2010 or so... unemployment insurance, hanging out, drinking beer all day

A bunch of buddies were also unemployed so we did nothing together

I kind of partly have this in that I frequently end up doing nothing outside work hour at the moment.

I seem to have no energy for anything other than compulsively reading news media online, watching tv series, and listening to music. With a long walk usually thrown into the mix at weekends.

It’s really frustrating as I’d like to do more - but I always seem to fall back to a default position of doing nothing after work.

I don't work and yet I'm always "doing something" and also my life is much more stressed and paradoxically slightly less precarious (but I'm not getting too carried away here) than when I used to slog hard and was frequently doing 60 hour weeks to make some parasite richer. Mainly because now I'm consistently poor rather than dealing with the boom or bust cycles at shitty little companies as a worker, particularly as experienced post 2008. But I couldn't be happier that I'm a "non-productive" member of society, mainly because I despise rich people and... yeah I think that's about it!

That's why I have always had a certain amount of respect for posh rich people of the old school. They managed to preserve money across generations.

I'm like Luna, outside of work I do nothing at all but play video games and watch stuff online. I used to bike ride, paint and draw but now don't have the energy or will for any of that.

was made redundant 2 weeks before my 50th birthday in jan' 2018.
out of choice, i have not worked since.
due to my wifes death 10 years ago, i get a small private pension from her (less than the uk state pension),
and cos we had life insurance the mortgage got written off as soon as her cancer was terminal.
i hated every job i have had (bar the last one at which i was at for 14 years),
and the idea of trying to find another job stressed me out to panic attack levels.
financially it's not the easiest of options, but for my mental wellbeing, it has been the best decision ever.
also, it meant i was able to be a full time dad for mk2 until he buggered off to university
i.e. make the most of the end of my full on time as dad which became rather important during the first lockdown.
i can easily fill a day with : chores (house/garden), local walk + charity shops, music, re-reading old comics, and tv/films.

some of my worst nightmares are all usually work related. I keep dreaming I'm trying to do my old job that I haven't done in a decade and no matter how hard I try, I can't do it anymore and it feels like the ultimate humiliation!

Heh. Anyway working's a mug's game, fuck it. I'd retire tomorrow if I could afford it. Which I can't.

i never minded the actual job (s/w support/qa testing etc).
it was all the crap that went with it : the never ending meetings, the office politics, the f*cking corporate doublespeak, the 360 degree performance reviews etc.
that said, i was lucky at my last job as after my wife died they were very accommodating.
i worked 3 days part time, and was allowed unpaid school holidays leave to look after the kids.
the idea of starting afresh in a full time role as the new boy aged 50 filled me with The Fear.
once i made the decision to call it quits it felt like a massive weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
i had a planned budget to get me through to state pension age, but this last 12 months have shot my plan to bits.
thankfully i live a very small life without any expensive treats (other than trying to keep the old car on the road!).
but for the time being i aint being dragged back into the rat race.
i have loved the fun in the last couple of weeks where i have been blamed for the staff shortages across every industry.
all of us 50+ folks who have just told corporates to f*ck off are clearly the cause of inflation etc

my year and a half of furlough during the pandemic was the greatest period of my adult life. no work, no irl interactions with anybody. just played golf by myself if the weather was okay. stayed in and watched TV/played FIFA if it wasn't. I had never been happier.