The Unthinking Steps
There are seven flights of steps up to our flat: six main ones plus the one that takes you up to the main staircase from the ground level. I call that first flight “the unthinking steps.”
Basically, I find the ascent of the stairs really boring. There are small things I can do to alleviate the boredom, such as fishing the door keys out of my pocket, but there aren’t enough of these small things to occupy my mind all the way to the top.
So instead of squandering my “entertainment” on that very first flight, I try to empty my head of thoughts completely. It’s a little exercise in mindlessness.
It doesn’t always work. Once I’m in the building, I start thinking automatically about the things I’ll do once I’m home. But I try to quash that automatic process for the few seconds that it takes to climb the unthinking stairs.
The idea is to survive the boredom of the repetitive ascent up the stairs. But it’s also to slow down, to stop planning or letting the mind fly too soon into the future.
Do you have an unthinking stairs or similar?
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Ennui
By “the problem of leisure,” Stuart Whatley in the New Statesman (a generally left-wing periodical) refers to the idea that most people wouldn’t know how to spend their time if they no longer had to go to work. Or, worse, that they would spend it deleteriously. It’s the “lotus-eater” theory in which we all become the obese layabouts of WALL-E. I’ve always found this to be a deeply conservative and patronising position. My position is that, after a period of idling, most people will want to act, to help themselves and the world in some way. But what if I’m wrong?
Over a decade of writing and thinking about modern work and its opportunity costs, I have generally mentioned the “problem of leisure” only in passing, largely because I would like to believe that it is soluble. Yet the political situation in the United States (and some other industrialised democracies) demands a reckoning, and it cannot be understood without reference to misspent leisure.
Whatley worries, basically, that the nihilistic politics that led to Trump and Vance in the US (and to Starmer and, perhaps inevitably, a PM Farage in the UK) and to an inward-looking rejection of optimistic internationalism, was caused by an ennui inherent to increased and misspent leisure time coupled with a lack of interest in boring or bullshitty work.
I’d argue that leisure time isn’t increasing, not in recent years anyway. It increased over the 20th Century for sure, thanks to well-organised labour movements, but we’re in the gig economy now, where, for many, every hour has some small cash value and must be hungrily seized upon as a matter of survival. I can’t deny, however, the sort of alienation from work he describes seems to be increasing (it’s certainly why I wanted to escape) and the likelihood that some people fall into a Leisure Trap of “an endless stream of video content or chocolate cake or edibles or any other indulgence cannot deliver lasting satisfaction. Everything gets old eventually, leaving one to grope around for the next fix.”
It’s the reason, I think, that there was no post-pandemic cultural renaissance comparable to the last century’s interwar years. We didn’t have it bad enough in the pandemic. Netflix and YouTube made it just about acceptable to be stuck indoors all the time. Some people even preferred life that way. I’m forced to accept that the ennui Whatley speaks of probably exists.
And yet he does not give up on my sort of optimism:
Yet solutions to the problem of leisure exist throughout our own wisdom tradition, which stresses the value of friendship (Epicurus), contemplation (Aristotle), and “other-regarding” public service (Cicero). These basic human goods have been severely eroded, producing an age of loneliness, inattention, and ginned-up tribalism; but each could be reclaimed with sufficient free time and a proper command over it. While there will always be demagogues, conspiracists, and cult leaders, they would have no purchase over a people who can find fulfilment in themselves.
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An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 83. Marrow.
Dear Diary, my troubles lie ruined and in my wake. After a long period (almost six months) of debilitating illness, I seem to be well again.
I visited my parents in England last week (the change of scene alone being just the tonic), was reunited with the crew to actively work on the film again, and now, at home, I work quite happily in a way unthinkable just a few weeks ago.
This boom in pleasant activity is coupled with a thrice-weekly hospital therapy. It’s too soon to say if the therapy is helping (I think I got better naturally) or will help to keep the condition from returning, but I enjoy the walks to and from the hospital. It takes me through a leafy neighbourhood of beautiful townhouses and, since the weather has been good, these morning walks are accompanied by glorious birdsong.
In terms of creative work, I must not overexert myself lest doing so should lead to a resurgence of the illness, but I’m so keen to make up for lost time. Finally out of bed, I want to eat the world and suck at the marrow. And that appetite in its own self feels good.
So I’ve been working on the film as I previously mentioned, socialising somewhat, closing in on the end of an editing project (the first major thing I was able to pick up, editing being easier than writing during a medicated brain fog), and lining things up for an 18th print edition of New Escapologist. On that note, please chip in to the Kickstarter if you have not already, as everything depends on its success.
There are meds I no longer feel obliged to take, the ones that make me fall asleep. This is good. The step counter on my phone has numbers on it again. Green shoots!
I have shaved off my beard of convalescence! I’m enjoying dressing well when I go out, so utterly tired of ointment-caked PJs.
All for now. I just wanted to register this development in the diary, to announce that I’m moving on from the shitness of illness, that, suddenly, everything seems possible. And not a moment too soon.
