There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.
—Andrew Jackson

I had nothing to do today after school and, with apologies to the former President of the United States, I had a pretty good time.

Tomorrow exams start which means I’ll be entering a cycle of denial, wishful thinking and distraction that should be a lot of fun.

When it come to having lots to do and not doing it, I am the master. For example, when I was in graduate school, right at the end of the term when exams were coming up, I had essays to mark and papers to write, I would bake cookies.

In my defense, it was an experiment to see if the Nieman-Marcus cookie recipe included in a family cookbook was actually good.  (Note: it is, but I recommend replacing one cup of butter with a cup of sour cream.) Also in my defense, I would pass the cookies around the department at Ole Miss, mostly to keep myself from getting fatter than I already was at the time.

Now the distraction can involve games and writing and reading. Oh, and there’s the binge watching of whatever random TV show I decide to watch. (In the past: Dexter, NCIS, Only Fools and Horses, Red Dwarf, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) Occasionally I will read something, too.

To try to prevent the binge watching from happening, I’ve stocked up on back issues of various podcasts and things that can be enjoyed without needing to turn on a computer. Turning on a computer, mind you, in and of itself is not bad, it’s the “well, let me check my email first” and the “well, a couple quick World of Tank matches won’t hurt” and the “Well, it’s too late to do anything now, I’ll just take care of this in the morning.”

That cycle ends with the “Holy Crap is that what day it is? I need to finish!” phase.