I like the word fritter, even though it conjures up smells of cheapo fried-ups and it hints at the wasting of precious time. Oh yes, I fritter a lot. I've always frittered you see and at some point I even fretted I would fritter, even when I wouldn’t start frittering until I actually fretted about it, which is absolutely insane. In the now far away days when my currency was not money but time, I still succeeded in frittering plenty of it, especially when I used to return to my hotel room, take a warm bath and then zone out in front of television programmes I really did not want to watch. I think it’s symptomatic that I do not remember any of them, even though I recall all the beds I slept in and baths I slipped into at the time.
Now that I do not work outside of the house any longer, the house itself has become the signifier of frittering and the raison d’etre of my fretting. Take today for example. What did I do today? I don’t know. At a guess I would say I did nothing and nothing is a rather accurate description of it as well. The idea was to spend a quiet day of study and philosophical contemplation, the sort of thing I need to do when I harness brain power in order to effectively pour it onto the page. Strange as it may sound, a philosophical reading of The Name Of The Rose intertwined with Batman isn’t something as easy as a blog post to write.
Work didn’t happen, because I aimlessly drifted from nothing to more nothing from not very much to even less until I hurled myself on the exercise bike at four in the afternoon, slotted The Rise Of The Silver Surfer into the computer to make the pedalling ordeal ever so slightly more bearable and reached the end of the day feeling like I at least burnt 800 calories. So this fritter problem continues to rear its head, no matter where I work or what I do. We often lament a lack of time but... what do we really do with it when we do have it? That’s when the fretting begins, at least in my case; I fret that I fritter and nothing gets written. Apart from scattered thoughts.
