WASTING TIME

I've always had a propensity for day-dreaming and wasting time. I remember when I was in primary school that I used to gaze out of the window and ignore what was going on in class. The background noise - teacher's voice, babble of conversations, desks scraping on floors - would become white noise. When I took my eyes off the view out of the window I was able to unfocus my eyes somehow and make the teacher almost disappear. The room would become much longer and the front of the classroom seemed a long way away - like    viewing through an inverted telescope.

This continued right through intermediate, secondary and university. At Victoria University in Wellington I used to spend hours gazing out of the library windows which from the elevated position commanded such a great view of Wellington harbour. I remember one particular afternoon as I watched a tugboat leaving the wharves making its way out of the harbour. It disappeared behind the hills for a while before eventually returning towing a container ship. The whole exercise took several hours and I watched it in its entirety, an unread book open in front of me.

At work over the years when in dull meetings I would employ the same 'out of body' technique and drift away for a while. Sometimes a directly asked question would shake me out of reverie and I would mumble some sort of answer, often creating a bit of confusion but usually it made no difference (boring management meetings seem to have the agenda of making some arseholes feel important and seldom are constructive).

My nickname was 'Sleepy'.

Now that I am semi retired I can indulge in my favourite pastime and just drift away.

Today I'm looking out over the city from our 16th floor apartment. If I open the doors to the deck I get the sounds of a big city coming to me in a muted way. People far below look like Lowry stick figures and cars like Matchbox models.

 A couple of hours of this is good for the soul. I think I'll conjure up a lucid-dream and go for a flight.