My Current Job Occupation is to Enjoy Life

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In college, I was so busy that I felt panicked when I had nothing to do. I could not accept the concept of free time as a time to do nothing. Free time was spent going to extra lectures that Professor Yaqub recommended us to see, or to catch a movie I had missed at the cinema at the IV Theater for $3, or to watch a spoken word show that a friend was in.

Free time was eating lunch in Storke Plaza while watching a band at noon on Tuesdays, and then deciding I liked the band enough to make an interview out of it and put it in the newspaper. Free time was watching “Entourage” with my boyfriend Matt and catching up on all the text messages I hadn’t responded to in the last few days. Free time was calling mom and dad back after a week, or actually reading my Vietnam war historical documents homework.

I was involved in too many clubs and had too many internships; I sailed to graduation having been an editor, a graphic designer, an office assistant, a radio show programmer, an event planner, and an honors student. I was overwhelmed with obligations that I loved so much that I couldn’t give anything up.

My job at the Daily Nexus, the UCSB campus newspaper, was that of Artsweek Editor. Essentially I edited people’s take on poetry readings, musical performances, and new literature. I woke up at 5 a.m. to do this, to get those edits in and sent over to copy and then to later publish them with graphics and captions and headlines and subheads. I worked to the bone, endlessly planning, editing, writing, going to events, sending emails, building PR connections, holding meetings, working on the Artsweek video series.

I read through so much writing about art and culture, edited so many words, and at the end of the day, I absorbed nothing. Nada. Zip. I don’t think I could have told you a thing about art and culture. I don’t think I could have given an informed opinion on why Miles Davis was a blessing to society, or why five year olds today still love the Beatles.

I knew all the right names and the genres and I’d listened to all the greats off Natalie’s record player, but I was a phony. A person with too many interests who dipped into things only at the surface, treating those interests like an iceberg. Audrey loves photography and design and live performance and spoken word and musicals and presidential history. That is how I would describe myself. But there’s deeper knowledge to all this then the fast facts that I’d incubated.

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I’m sitting here in Madrid, surrounded by art and jazz and flamenco dancers and the paintings of Reubens – holy hell, Reubens! – and I am thinking about my life, in that selfish way that solo travelers do. I’m thinking that I am in Europe to learn and observe and eat, and to create a collection of writings based on all of those things.

Early on in the trip, my friend Pau told me that he was jealous. “You get to enjoy the next three months for the sake of enjoying three months of your life.” I didn’t really think about it that way until now, until I arrived alone in this artistic mecca of the world. I thought of the eating and getting to and fro and writing about it all as some sort of international job I was holding, a blog being something I could show to future employers as proof: HEY LOOK! I WASN’T JUST PARTYING IN EUROPE I PROMISE, I WAS DOING SOMETHING!! I DON’T EVEN LIKE TO PARTY THAT MUCH!!

Again, there’s that need to do something. To always be PRODUCING, creating, making, filming, photographing, writing, to be doing something of value.

Sunrise from the airplane
Sunrise from the airplane over the Mediterranean Sea
Sunset over Ibiza
Sunset over Ibiza

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“You get to enjoy the next three months for the sake of enjoying three months of your life.”

I’m absorbing that. Soaking that in. I am in Europe, and for the first time in my life, I’m not working. I’m not running from point a to point b in the sense that I’m making any money or getting a degree or running a section of a newspaper. I’m running from point a to point b because I’m off to a strange place and saying goodbye to a newly familiar one. I’m building a home for myself in 16 different cities, an interlocking network of good faith and positive experiences.

I HAVE SO MUCH TIME.

So I think that I’m going to take the enjoyment thing to the next level, and listen to all that music I always wanted to listen to, and read all those books I’ve always said I would read, and check out all those those podcasts my older brother Jacob is always telling me to check out.

I’m going to use my time to explore what’s lurking underneath the icebergs.

I am going to experience time in the Spanish way, and move about it slowly.

I think there’s a Madonna song about that.

Toodles from Dalt Vila in Ibiza
Toodles from me and my selfie stick in Dalt Vila in Ibiza

 

 

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