How I came to be idle

Where was I? Oh yeah, my life of leisure. I took the entire summer off last year. I hadn't done that since freshman year of college. Even in high school I worked all weekend at Brooks Pharmacy. I needed to detox from work, from fashion, from the L train, from the constant bombardment of noise and people. I wanted to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. I realize now that I should've started this blog back then to chronicle my adventures real-time, but oh well. 

I started doing things that I wanted to do, for no other reason than my own enjoyment. I went to the beach a few times a week, taking the LIRR from Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn. I read tons of books, a few a week. I started cooking more. I spent a lot of time in my own company, which I felt I desperately needed to do in order to locate Christina again. I know that sounds really hokey, "I needed to find myself, dude", but it's sort of true. I felt I had lost my SELF in that world of go, go, go and do more, sell more, make more $$. The way I believed I could find my way back to myself was to literally do nothing. One of my old therapists taught me a great slogan or mantra, "When in doubt, do nothing." I knew I needed to be still and quiet, and listen for my own tiny little inner voice to make herself known again. I really tried to keep an open mind, and not have any preconceived notions of what I should do next.

Now this was not easy by any means. I suffered from guilt almost every day. Guilt about not working, fear that everyone thought I was a "slacker". I always hated slackers, mostly because I was envious I think. I was playing every day, going to the beach with my boogie board in the morning when everyone else was going off to work. Ha ha. Suckers! But after a while I felt a new pride when people asked me what I had been doing. "Nothing, " I would answer. It made more than a few people angry and confused. 

But doing nothing, to me, doesn't always mean staring into space dreaming. Although that is a big part of it. I was doing lots of things, I just wasn't working at a job or career. I started studying Italian, which I had always wanted to do because my great-grandparents were from Italy. I never would've been able to commit to taking a class when I was working! Leaving at 6:00 (the supposed quittin' time) was impossible with all the work and meetings. It was also frowned upon. If you left at 6:00, or Heaven forbid before that, your good-byes would be met with "Must be nice." The people would talk about you and say that you did nothing and left early all the time. 

Anyway, back to happier times....part of my doing nothing is studying, learning, attending classes, thinking. So I made a new commitment to keep taking classes. I'll leave you with a list of other things I enjoy under the umbrella of doing nothing. 

Paint by numbers, crossword puzzles, cooking, dinner parties, board games, listening to music, taking baths, playing guitar hero, knitting, reading, volunteering, croquet, gardening, puzzles, sleeping.....

I'll try to explain more about Leisure Society, the company, next time. Im figuring it out as I go along.

Lady of Leisure

Welcome! What is Leisure Society? Well, it's the company I started a few months ago. I want to design products that help people to spend more of their time at leisure. I have been designing clothing and accessories for the past 12 years in New York, for corporate companies. It was really fun and glamorous for a good many of those years, don't get me wrong. I travelled around the world, and shopped all the time, every girl's dream, right? Well, I got tired of it after a while. All I did was work. I had no hobbies, no time to take classes. In short, I felt like I had no life. And believe it or not, my job wasn't particularly creative. I was devoting all my time and energy to this thing I didn't even believe in. Worst of all, I was stressed out all the time and all I did was complain about my job. So I saved up some money and quit. 

I'm not interested in climbing the corporate ladder. I don't want to have a "career" if it means that I have no life other than my job. There's so much more I want to do with my time! I work as a freelancer in the fashion industry as a way to make money. But what I really want is to do my own thing. I want to make my own job. 

At first, I didn't know which way was up. I thought I wanted to go back to school to become a teacher because I wanted to do something with more meaning. But truthfully, that was only one of a million things I could do. I decided to volunteer with kids at my local library, the Leonard branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, helping them with their homework to see if I really wanted to become a teacher. 

I found a book there that changed my life: How To Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson. It validated everything I felt. I was sick of working! I was going to be a lady of leisure for as long as possible.