Rediscovering the Art of Doing Nothing

While living in Madrid, I had the luxury of ample free time. Now that I am back in the Bay Area, a place where most people can't resist looking at their cell phones at least once while eating dinner...at a restaurant...with their families, adjusting to the American way of ALWAYS DOING SOMETHING has been neither easy or fun.

However, from time to time I feel the need to spend an entire day in my house doing nothing, which I like to call 'having a Spain Day.' When I have a 'Spain Day,' I enjoy myself, but not without battling a good size portion of American guilt.

Today for example, I was supposed to go to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (a really fun free music festival in Golden Gate Park). I've had it on my calendar since June because I was so excited about it, but when I woke up today, I just didn't have the energy to put myself together and drive up to San Francisco. So I didn't. I have spent the whole day in my house, with the exception of a run. And I had a great relaxing day in which I accomplished a whole lot of nothing.

In the States, more often than not, we derive a sense of pleasure from the things we've done or the things we will do instead of the overall process of doing them. For example, in Madrid, people gather at Retiro and spend hours just sitting in the sun doing nothing. We Americans are more likely to spend 30 minutes in the sun and then run off to check our Blackberries. Anyone who has a corporate job knows we are lucky if we have enough vacation time (and money) to take one vacation a year.

I have found it hard to follow my whims here because most every minute of my day belongs not to me, but to something else. I have time constraints and if I don't leave my house at a certain time, I will inevitably be stuck in traffic. And I can't afford to sit in traffic because I just don't have time for it. I'm all for working hard and reaping the benefits of said hard work, but where is the happy medium? And where do we draw the line? I feel like I'm paying for that ample free time I enjoyed in Madrid and it was so worth it.