What To Do When There´s Nothing To Do

When was the last time you had nothing to do? I'm not talking about an entire day with nothing to do, because we all know those are hard to come by, especially during the holiday season; but I mean, when was the last time you had a half hour truly to yourself? How did you spend it? You're obviously spending a moment of your free time reading this blog right now and will surely spend part of it on facebook or checking emails, but what do you do when you're not online? When there aren't any people around to socialize with, and there is really nothing that you have to be doing, what do you do? Is there ever a time when you don't automatically reach for something to distract yourself? When was the last time there was no ipod/internet/TV/book/sudoku/phone to turn to? What did you do then? Cook? Go for a run? Crochet? Are these all just distractions too? Not to get all deep on you, but when was the last time you just sat in silence with your thoughts? Where did they take you? It's probably hard to answer that because we are all constantly distracting ourselves with other “duties” or pastimes or other people's problems and we so rarely, if ever, really just stop. I've privately journaled about this before – about how we never allow ourselves time to analyze our lives, our hopes, our dreams, what we want to become, where we want to go, who we want to be – because we're always reaching for the next distraction. That was one of the many journal entries that led me to finally finish my Peace Corps application among other things.

I'm by no means on my way to saying that I've overcome this need to be constantly occupied here in Nicaragua. Don't let yourselves believe that just because I'm living in a developing country, that there aren't just as many distractions here. When I have downtime, which I've had a lot more of lately now that I'm out of training, I have plenty of ways to spend it. I can read, listen to music, practice in my Spanish workbook, prepare recycled materials projects, blog, go to the cyber, watch TV, plan out my weekly schedule...

I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this, but it occurred to me this morning that I never quite know what to do with myself during those awkward moments in between distractions. It might just be because I'm not the most laid back person in the world, but I always feel like I need to at least look occupied when I'm doing nothing in someone else's house. Right now for example, my host father and brother are painting the house, a job that they won't let me help with, and my host mom is doing paperwork in her room. I therefore have turned to my laptop to make it seem as though I too have something I need to be doing. I've already done my laundry for the week, made about 5 different kinds of friendship bracelets as examples for my youth group kids, and planned out my next English class, which I won't be teaching until Tuesday. So, after my last bracelet and before typing this blog, I walked out of my room to see what everyone else was up to (even though I already knew), so as to not seem antisocial. In doing so, I proceeded to make awkward eye contact/exchange awkward smiles and small talk for about 3 minutes then hurried back to my room.

I think my original point in writing this was to address how hard it is to make myself go out and do things, when there is in fact nothing that I have to do. (It's summer vacation here.) It's actually really hard to walk around town without a purpose, which therefore makes it difficult to meet new people. If I don't have someone to walk around with, I'm generally too shy to just wander. I'm just not used to doing things without having a clear cut reason to do them. Sit in the park alone just so that I'm seen, hoping that some more outgoing people will come up and talk to the gringa? That seems so awkward! Maybe I'm just an awkward person? Ugh, I don't know.

I realize this blog jumped around like crazy and isn't very coherent. Sorry about that; I really did start out with what seemed like concrete thoughts worth sharing. I wish someone would just come invite me somewhere for the day so I'd have a reason to be out and about!

***OK NO LIE...I SWEAR to you all that not even ten minutes after writing this, one of my 21 year old host cousins came over and asked me why I wasn't at the fair in the park! (I responded that it was obviously because no one told me about it...ughhh I hate that my host mom never feels the need to tell me about anything going on in town.) So then I happily followed her there and bought some organic compost for the garden I have yet to start (maybe next week), ate some AMAZING fair food and drank some super refreshing cacao frescos...mmm!! All to the tune of a sweet Marimba band of course!
Maybe I really should just force myself to wander around at least once a day to make sure I'm not missing out on stuff like that. It's really way harder than it sounds though.