Too Much Musing, Not Enough Muses

While I’m sure I’ve said it before, I started blogging as a way to fill all the extra downtime I have at work. While blogging has certainly helped, it works best in conjunction with actual work, like teaching classes or preparing lessons. At the time of writing, it’s a Friday afternoon, where I’ve had nothing to do all day, and am facing down two full weeks of days exactly like this one. 

It feels weird to complain about having a job with so much time spent not actually doing any work. Most people would kill for a job like this. At my previous jobs I would have jumped at the chance to get more downtime. Once you have it though, you can see it as being a bit of a double edged sword. 

Having chunks of time between classes, or days without any classes at all, leaves you with a lot of time at your desk. If I have classes, I’m more likely to spend that time wisely, being productive when I can, or having a little brain break to recharge before my next class. When I have no classes though, that’s when things become a little tricky. 

It’s the end of the school year here in Japan, and students get a short break before the school year starts again. This gives me two full weeks without any classes, but I still need to go work and be present at the office. To do what you may ask? Excellent question, couldn’t tell you. 

I feel like this is a problem even JET is aware of, many ALTs have lots of downtime and not many responsibilities to fill that time. In some ways, I wish they gave us more time off, even if that included a reduced salary, or even unpaid days off. I doubt I’d do all that much with the time off, but I doubt I’d be quite as bored if I could play games or watch netflix at home instead. 

People with a stronger work ethic or sense of discipline could probably make excellent use of all this extra time. You could study, learn a new skill, read a book, I’ve even heard of people taking online college courses with all this free time. In my case, I started a blog. I don’t want to disparage myself too much, it still takes some work to keep running and posting three times a week, but it feels a little inconsequential. 

 I’ve never been someone to attach too much of my self worth or identity to my work. Work has always been something I do in order to live my life, if it’s something I enjoy or find meaning in, that's just a bonus. I’ve certainly had jobs I care about more, but others I do just because I need a job in order to live. 

I choose this job because I like to teach, but mostly for the opportunities it offers. I wanted to come to Japan to learn more about the culture, hopefully get better at the language, and broaden my horizons. A lot of those things mostly happen outside of work. I like this job, but often feel like I’m not really doing anything. 

When I taught at my practicum in college, even though I didn’t have any credentials, I taught adults for almost a full 8 hours by the end. I was responsible for choosing the topics, the curriculum, the activities, everything. Here I’ve been making about a fifty minute lesson about once a week, and having usually no more than three classes a day. 

Normally, a chill job like this would be a dream come true. That might have been true, if I was still back home in Canada. Some days I can’t help but think, I left my family and friends behind to move halfway around the world just to sit at my desk for 8 hours a day. Not doing any real work, just surfing the web, trying to kill time while still looking vaguely busy.

When you have more going on, people in your life, relationships, hobbies, whatever it may be, you don’t need to work to make you feel more fulfilled. Here in Japan, lacking many of those things, I feel a little hollow some days. I don’t often leave work with the feeling of having put in a day’s worth of work, or feeling accomplished or productive. 

Usually, by the time I leave work I’ve been staring at the clock counting down the hours before I get to leave. I used to be a terrible clock watcher at work. The end of the day could never come fast enough. Eventually, I learned the day tends to go by faster the less you stare at the clock. You focus on whatever it is you're supposed to be doing, like it or not, and plug along. 

Here, I’m not really sure I’m supposed to be doing anything. Ostensibly, my down time should be spent preparing the next lesson. I can usually finish a lesson plan in around two or so hours if I really hone in. I try to mix things up a little when I can, but there’s only so many activities you can do in fifty minutes with high school students who speak limited English. 

With the school year ending, I’m also guessing that I’ll be starting with a brand new group of students, which means I can begin to reuse the four months of lessons I’ve already created. This gives me quite a bit of a buffer to work with, so it may be quite a while before I even need to make any new material. 

So, with this abundance of time, I feel like I have too much time to think and not enough to really think about. Most of what I end up thinking about while left to my own devices is contemplating my choices. I know this level of boredom is always temporary, but at the moment I can’t help but wonder just how much I can take. 

I don’t do terribly well without structure, if I’m left alone to my own devices with too much time on my hands, I rarely use it well. Sometimes I feel like I’m at my best when I’m busy, when I’m actively trying to juggle work, hobbies, friendships, and staying active. Without that balancing act, I tend to get lazy, and let the plates stop spinning. 

Idle hands are the devil's tools has never been my favorite saying, mostly because rather than get into mischief, I tend to fall into apathy. If I don’t have much I need to do, I don’t feel like doing much at all. Even the things I know that I “need” to do, start to feel more and more optional, and the spiral only continues. 

Like most of my more moody articles, I hope that writing all this out helps me move past it. In a perfect world, by the time I post this article a week or two later, it’s just passing thoughts in the rearview mirror. With all this time though, I feel like I muse too much on the same old muses. I worry I’ll run out of interesting or novel things to talk about, and that even this saving grace I’ve found might eventually fall by the wayside. 

If familiarity breeds contempt, perhaps I’ve become overly familiar with the notion that more than ever before, I have days where I know I’ll not have a single task placed before me in eight hours spent at my desk. This job is unique in a lot of aspects, and I doubt I’ll ever have a job where I get paid to spend as much time surfing the web or blogging ever again. 

I’ll try to relish in the novelty of it, but anything in too large a dose tends to get old quickly. If you have any ways you like to spend your time at a desk job, feel free to let me know. At this point I’d probably try just about anything if it’ll make my days a little more interesting.