I’m taking a class in Latin with the person I’m married to, which is great, and interesting, and compelling. Thing is, we started the class something like five weeks ago and somehow rather broad-stroke elements like this in my life don’t get a chance to show up in autobiographical forums like, say, right here. That is to say, I’ve been oppressed, burdened by my own frenetic activities. At brief glance, now, there is this shiny little universe of hobbies and internal perspectives I’ve built for myself, all rattling around and making distracting pachinko-like noises at all times of the day and night: work, household minutiae (less minute than I’d like these days), photography, reading, studying, Latin, letterpress, family, friends, the dog, my health, exercise, artistic expression, bills, bathing, drinking, dinner, RSVPs, gift shopping, brushing one’s teeth. What I have lost the ability to do recently is segment these into their relative weights. Everything feels the same: required, colorless and encumbering.

Thus I have noticed the way I think about things. Always thinking, never calming. But most of my internal sentences are starting with “I need to” or “I should” or “I gotta”, as in “I need to unload the dishwasher” and “I need to set some type tonight” or “I gotta go to bed.” A smart observer will note that these three tasks are not equal. But by chattering at myself incessantly with a heavy, joyless verb at the beginning of each sentence, I have stripped the fun out of some things.

Add to this another new habit, which seems to be that I am not just creating to-do lists, but eternally living about half an hour in the (rather bleak) future. At any given time I’m planning for the next four or five minor tasks on my list. It seems like I am never executing, merely collating more things that I must do. Sitting in my bath thinking “After this I’ll write that guy back about that thing, pay the mortgage, fold the laundry, finish my book, eat something.”

How dull. When I am asked how I’ve been and I answer “busy” I feel something curdling inside, an emotional equivalent of the smell of a fart. How cliche. How useless. Everyone says they are busy. What makes me so special?

I am fighting back. I have started to collect my inside sentences with a net, choking off those that begin with “I gotta”. I have restrained myself from adding daily activities to my internal list–I’m going to walk to work this morning whether or not I remember to do it–and I have recast my language about things I actually like to do: “I think I want to spend some time working on my press now.” On walks I let myself think freely, but try to broaden my context. I am still nagged by the question of how this started. Is it my unprecedented, scattered busy-ness at work? Is it David’s increased busy-ness at work, as well? Is it too many hobbies? But what seems consistent is my own spin of it, my own muddling of the fun with the grim. I want this to stop.

The word that best captures what I’m trying to leave behind  is in fact a 2nd-conjugation Latin verb: debere. This translates as “ought to, “”must,”"should”, and is the ancestor of our words “debt” and “debit.” You can see where that leads. I don’t want to live my life in existential debt. I want to be able have more time to lay around and write about the things I’m doing. For me, language is so important that doing is not as ultimate as expressing what one is doing.

My first step is underway: changing the internal words. Will the second step require me to jettison some of my lifestyle? I hope not.

Back to the beginning: I’m taking Latin this winter and I am loving it. Onward!