Oh God, must we do this again?

How did they ever convince me that being busy was a good thing? A large part of our culture frowns on having free time, frowns on "sitting around", frowns on "reflection"; the words alone conjure up images of misspent hours on the couch wearing tracksuits, being high and covered in crumbs. I woke up on Christmas morning wondering how I could best balance the work I had brought home and the obligatory Christmas cheer that I would be attending. I don't have the gumption to quit this job and tell someone to shove it somewhere. Besides, I would then be unemployed and people would call me lazy.

As the media spin and spin up the doom and gloom, as we rodents of the world see pink slips dangled before us in our wheels, I have managed to squeeze out enough time for a thought to myself, a thought to put out into space with the meager expectation that someone else has managed to squeeze some free time out of their lives (most likely as they're squeezing something else out) and will give this a squeeze. And so on.