My brain is rebelling against having nothing to do. Unfortunately it’s rebelling by doing nothing.

For various complicated reasons, I’m not teaching an evening class this term. This means my Tuesday and Thursday evenings are now free.

This gives me lots of extra time to do things I’ve been putting off doing. As Hamlet said, right before he changed his mind, “‘Tis a consummation / Devoutly to be wished”. Unfortunately, unlike Hamlet, my brain isn’t changing. It’s still in busy Tuesday and Thursday mode and it doesn’t seem to know what to do with all the free time.

I worked some yesterday, but today I couldn’t be bothered. The same thing happened on Tuesday.

I think part of it is the disruption of the rhythm I’d established during the course. Teach, wander down to Tokyo, drink coffee, write post, teach, travel, relax, go to bed at midnight.

Now, I’m home in the afternoon and I’m not used to all the down time. Rather than fill it, my brain is determined to waste it. I think we all have a natural tendency to enter denial mode when our usual excuses are no longer available. It’s easy not to do any writing or editing if we’re too busy with other things. However, when those other things go away, our brains start looking for new things.

I’ve even done the “just do it for two minutes and then you’ll catch fire and keep working.” And it’s true, that works for about 10 minutes, then something starts gnawing at the back of my brain and I decide to try something else. Usually something that involves a game.

Eventually, I’ll establish a new rhythm and start filling my evenings with things both productive and fun. Of course, soon after I do that, I’ll probably start the evening classes again. Even if I don’t, I’m pretty sure I can find a distraction.