{"id":2404,"date":"2013-07-15T22:52:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T05:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=2404"},"modified":"2013-08-23T22:56:25","modified_gmt":"2013-08-24T05:56:25","slug":"wasting-an-hour-not-in-an-offhand-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/15\/wasting-an-hour-not-in-an-offhand-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Wasting an Hour (Not in an Offhand Way)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/20130715_183013-PANO.jpg\" alt=\"20130715_183013-PANO.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"228\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of my favorite songs is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pink-floyd-lyrics.com\/html\/time-dark-lyrics.html\">Pink Floyd&#8217;s Time<\/a>, which begins with the lyric:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day<\/p>\n<p>You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As a youth I felt that keenly, and feared the biting lyric at the end of the second stanza:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.<\/p>\n<p>No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, now I know what it&#8217;s like to find <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=2294\">ten years have got behind you<\/a>. And I don&#8217;t regret the motivating force that that Pink Floyd lyric had in my life \u2026 but now I know it&#8217;s not all of the story. And so, on purpose, I did something today I haven&#8217;t done in a long time: &#8220;wasted&#8221; an hour \u2026 just reading in a park.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/20130715_183238.jpg\" alt=\"20130715_183238.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d dropped my wife off at the airport, run some errands, gone to the great <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bellsbooks.com\/\">Bell&#8217;s Bookstore<\/a> in Palo Alto, ran some more errands \u2026 but was still an hour early for my dinner reservation at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nolas.com\/index.html\">Nola&#8217;s<\/a>. I knew they&#8217;d probably seat me early, but it was a spectacular day \u2026 so I took <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.com\/067457625X\">the book I&#8217;d gotten from Bell&#8217;s<\/a>, sat down on a bench, and read.<\/p>\n<p>I did more than that, of course; I observed the world, watched the passersby, came up with story ideas, took pictures of my environment, watched the cars, called my Mom to see how she&#8217;s doing (a day before her birthday, but without mentioning it, so hopefully the flowers I&#8217;ve sent her will be even more of a surprise).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/20130715_1832491.jpg\" alt=\"20130715_183249.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And I reflected on all the sources of false wisdom I&#8217;ve heard, or more charitably, advice masquerading as wisdom, useful to certain people at certain times during their development, which may not be as universally wise as it first appears.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to find ten years have got behind me without knowing it \u2026 but for me, that&#8217;s led to years and years of pushing, pushing pushing. Sometimes, it&#8217;s good to just stop and smell the magnolias.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/20130715_183214.jpg\" alt=\"20130715_183214.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>To cultivate slowing down and watching time pass \u2026 and all that passes through time around you.<\/p>\n<p>-the Centaur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite songs is Pink Floyd&#8217;s Time, which begins with the lyric: Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day You fritter and waste the hours&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-2404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-we-call-it-living","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2404"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2419,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions\/2419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}