Young Lady at a Desk (#3)

Young Lady at a Desk

Boredom. Not from staying home, but from sitting at a work desk with contract papers and a computer in front of me.

The desk, to this very day, is situated in the house living area against a tall window overlooking the garden. For four days a week a nineteen-year-old young lady would glance out that window between solar technology pricing lists and client emails with a wishful look, aware of the subtle irony; I had chosen to work from home so that I could enjoy the garden, not stare at it through a panel of glass.

I could hardly complain, of course. Sleep clothes had become my new favourite fashion attire – specifically oversized cotton T-shirts and tracksuit pants. I wasted no effort in taking advantage of the many benefits of working from home. Being left to my own devices while my dad drove around seeing clients and solar electricians was enough to consolidate the fact that, well… I didn’t need money.

I had worked part-time at a local bakery most of my high school years, and had saved up a few thousand dollars. I wasn’t interested in travel, and I already had my own car at this point. In a house isolated from the society encompassing it, money had no real value. And that house, with its chapel-like high ceilings and polished timber floors, was the only place I intended to invest my life into at this stage.

Work became a sacrifice to keep my parents happy.

I would imagine all the people of the world who worked sixteen-hour shifts and lived in tiny, run-down apartments while tying to afford living expenses alongside their crippling debts. I would imagine starving families in Third World countries risking their lives for basic needs, praying that an air strike wouldn’t land on their flimsy shack roof. I imagined all these horrible realities – these fishbowls – I didn’t happen to have, as I sat in my desk chair filling out Excel spreadsheets. 

Who the hell was I to be complaining about boredom?

But the thing about fishbowls is that you can only live in one at a time, and typing out solar energy contracts for client names I had no face to pair with was about as exciting and fulfilling as it sounds. I couldn’t help but think I had so many better things to do while at home, things to make me wiser and stronger and more equipped in this new adult galaxy I’d warped into.

Why do societies drain away decades of our life as if they own us? Why is it that Australian school systems demand six hours each weekday, when many schools in Norway only demand four? These are the questions I asked no-one-in-particular as I sat at that desk. When I reassess these bohemian musings now, I realise I’d put a lot of worth on human time and effort… more than it deserves.

This is a question I ask myself now: What would happen if every person in the world was allowed to do whatever they wanted with all their time?

Back then I might have said, with naïve optimism, that everyone would start studying philosophy and planting trees and loving each other more and plucking their dreams from the starry sky like berries… and maybe they would, for a temporary period.

Having become a person who is allowed to do whatever I want with my time, I answer this: Humans are creatures of habit. Once freedom of time becomes a normal experience, its value becomes like air; we breathe air without much conscious appreciation, despite knowing we will suffocate without it. I treasured every moment in that peaceful house for the first six months out of school, and I used my moments well…

Until one winter night at two in the morning, when I found myself staring at the geometric shadows on the high ceiling from the living room rug. I stared at the ceiling for almost an hour, reflecting on the past few weeks gone… which amounted to nothing. In that numb moment, I was another shadow in the house, barely existing in the stillness.

The only sound that night was the ticking of the clock on the wall – but it meant nothing to me anymore.