Ever since I quit working, I have been faced with one question which I have been unable to even understand, leave alone answer. I keep getting asked how I manage to pass time.
Strangely, in my working days, I seem to have acquired a wholly undeserved reputation of being a workaholic. When that is the farthest from who I really was. It was just that I hated working so much that I used to want to finish it off as soon as possible so that I could get on with the more important activity of leaning back in my seat, closing my eyes and thinking deep thoughts, accompanied by a snore or two in the process. And, as it unfortunately happens in offices, the moment people hear your melodious snores they feel the irresistible need to helpfully push more work on you, assuming that you are bored of having nothing to do. Bored? Me?
Well, that comes from that queer notion that a man without anything to do will find it difficult to pass time. Me, I never felt the need. I mean, why did I have to do anything to make time pass? The minutes ticked and the seconds tocked without bothering about whether I was helping them along or no, so what was the problem? I allowed Time to go its way and I went mine, so there never really was a problem to pass time for me.
Like I have had reason to say before, when there is work to be done, Time just flew by. I start the day thinking I will get around to it soon and, before I know it, it is night and I feel that tomorrow is a better time to do it than today. And so it went. Perhaps that's what Einstein called relativity. Time seems to move faster when you have work than when you do not. Maybe that's the reason why people keep asking me "What do you do to pass time?" As a euphemistic question about what work I postpone.
Anyway, I do have my pastimes. Since childhood, I have been addicted to reading so I did not have to search for something to do when I had no convenient office to thrust things on me.
But, yes, I never thought of it as Time hanging heavy on my hands and waiting for me to give it a push by reading. If I had, then reading would probably have palled on me. It is only as long as it was something that I wanted to do that it was fun.
After all, if you start feeling that you HAVE to do something, it starts seeming like work!