Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Annals of Productivity…

are non-existent. All the same, after weeks of heart-rending un-productivity, surely it wouldn’t hurt to procrastinate just a paltry day or two. Or ten. What is productivity anyway? Isn’t it a state of mind relative to your general happiness? Can’t I choose to define productivity however I want to? Why am I forced to subscribe to a standard of productivity imposed on me by an arbitrary authority? Am I just a pawn of money-hungry admissions officers?
Of course, I have a choice. They want us to have ‘free will’ after all. Nobody is forcing me to do this to myself. It’s a democracy, for God-forsaken sakes. I have a choice, the wonderful freedom of choice, just like a guy at the gunpoint has a choice to be shot or not be shot. Statistics are astonishingly favorable to the latter, but no one can say he didn’t have a choice. Of course he did. He just tried to have some basic common sense, too.
So let me choose. I choose to be forgetful. Let me be forgetful and I will be content. Let me forget that I have to be productive and drown myself in bliss ineffable until the sounding doom of consequence comes. Let me spend this day in paradise and I will gladly suffer a thousand years of agony in hell. Let the world just be a simple shining bubble of fragile joy. I don’t mind if it’s hollow. I don’t mind if it’ll burst. I really don’t.
Really.
Fine. Fine! I do mind! I do care! Because I don’t have free will. Because it’s vaguely discomforting to think that behind it all is just the glorified whine of someone who’s too lazy to work and too stubborn to admit it. Because colleges don’t appreciate this fascinating and diverse perspective on the moral valuation of productivity. Because in two weeks I just have to get it done.
Because…because…oh, just because. Yeah.

Damnations on them all.

1 comment:

Laura Kling said...

I am so glad you wrote this.