New Hours

“Did you notice the new art in the kitchen?" my fiancé asks me. We moved in together a few months prior. Sharing the railroad-style first floor of a historical town house in Queens, rich with century-old details and wood-framed bay windows, has been easy.

I stare at an oil-based rendering of a lemon, its small shadow cast against a blank canvas. A second framed piece houses a nectarine on a green and brown backdrop. I could see myself spending $15 on each at a local craft fair.“Guess who made it,” he says.

"You?” I ask. My fiancé is a talented visual artist who doesn’t typically apply his talents beyond the occasional bored sketch or save-the-date illustration for a friend’s wedding.

“Try again.”

“Literally no idea.”

He looks at me with a really? expression.

“You! You made it!" he beams.

A piece of artwork sitting on a shelf in my home, created with my bare hands, unrecognized. So many years full of doing and moving and creating that I don't remember taking an art class, one out of the five or six continuing-education courses I attended over a decade ago in the years after graduating from NYU. Because I’d realized that after work I didn’t have…homework to do? So I needed something—anything—to occupy those empty hours, to have something to show for myself. 

In quarantine, I feel conflicted that decimating lists, creating and tackling goals, fuels my endorphins—because I have the luxury of time to do so. When friends with children can barely carve out an hour of downtime for themselves. 

Showering every other day seems like an exercise in extreme self-care. It's not out of laziness or because tiny progeny prevent me from making use of my expendable time in any way I see fit. It's because time spent showering during a period of self-quarantine could instead be used doing something far more productive, given all these new hours to spend with myself: walking the dog (in a socially-distant, responsible manner). Writing. Reading. Vacuuming. Cleaning the three litter boxes of two very particular cats. Creating a PowerPoint Jeopardy! game for my Saturday night Zoom call with friends. Repainting my kitchen. Contacting references for the dog rescue for which I volunteer. Working on the abs I maybe (sort of?) finally see poking through after I've gotten creative with workouts in lieu of the same old gym circuit.

Sometimes I wonder if the sheer inability to be bored is a blessing or a curse, and if it’s worse than the unrelenting urgency to cross items off my to-do list at the same rate I must create new ones.

The “It’s okay to do nothing!” agenda continues to gain momentum, not least because for many, the anxiety and sadness born out of or exacerbated by these strange times manifests in avoiding all the things we’d like to be doing, one day.

But it’s also unequivocally valid to pursue joy and to understand what that unique path of pursuit looks like. 

On a quiet morning walk with my dog, we spot poppies, tulips, and diminutive blooms sprouting ambitiously out of sidewalk cracks, glowing a bright lemon yellow. I’m reminded that spring persists, with or without us, and that staying in motion is critical to finding that joy. It's how I survive. 

Give me time, and I will fill it until it overflows.

Published May 14th, 2020