Endless Days

I am a goddess of infinity. Master of to-dos. The bored lady of the house. The sun is a pendulum that moves over my head, swaying from today to tomorrow in measured gaps.
So this is how it feels to live from day to day, to wake to a free morning without commitments, unhampered by work.

Each day is an empty box and I fill it without thinking. Sometimes it feels like I am riding on a wave of endless undulation, a drifter who lives to eat, watch and plan. My tasks are small and unessential in the grand world of careers. I can prance around in my room all morning, I can sleep at 2 pm if I feel like it. Or search for a new recipe to cook for dinner. I take 3 showers a day, and leisurely have time for a foot soak. I can be fickle with my hours, to stretch my tasks into the day.

The internet is a dependable companion in my in-a-zap plans. One minute I am deep into reading self-help articles until a whim gets pass me and i look it up on the web. When I am done, I turn to scoping out nice out-of-town destinations. Or browse the local celebrity forum to get the dirt on the popular people.

I suppose this is how it must feel to be a housewife. Except of course that the housewife would be so full of tasks (washing, cooking, and all those household chores). But the boredom, the flatline of being so unhurried by anything outside your home, well, this is how it must feel. It’s fun and relaxing in the beginning, but a month into this routine and I feel almost dead at times. I leave the house everyday finding little tasks such as buying something from the department store, buy the grocery, go for a facial, to the bookstore or the dvd shop, anything to give me the chance to break the monotony of seeing the same corners of the house day after day.

It is a relief that this is temporary. That soon I’ll go back to the rat race, settle in a new place and face the challenges of a new workplace and culture. There is a lesson here however. This expanse of days made me appreciate the tenacity of other people, how our househelp wakes up to do the same things day after day after day. I can emphatize how hopelessly boring it feels on bad days. How sometimes having so much time is almost like a prison.

The days are hot, humid and endless. But because I know that soon my freedom-filled days are over, I savor them like the delicious ripe mangoes in season—tart and sweet and fleetingly precious.