Juvy

       
You're home. You're alone. You're not working anymore. You often think about  
the many things you could do with your time that you were not doing. Why is it 
that what it is that we should do is very rarely what we are motivated to do? 
Your heightened contemplative state pushes you to  try to understand the trigger  
between anticipation and execution that is so often lost.

With an excess of time on your hands and a handful of things you could do to  
pass the time, you won't analytically prioritize and execute said tasks in an optimal 
fashion. Rather, you might drift into a mode which some call 'slacker', others  
'laziness', and you call 'do exactly what I want'. Because when time is scarce,  
you have little choice, there is a best way of doing things and by doing them, you   
make yourself     
happier because you got them done. But, luckily that's not all of life. At  
times, you are rewarded with times of repose and relaxation. What great words.  
Repose. To be more in one position. To repose. Relaxation. To be more lax.  
Ideal. Here's another word. Rejuvenation. This is one word I like particularly,     
because 
who knows what it means to be juvy. Still, it is that that we should all seek: 
to be more juvy.

Juvy is obviously not a word, but it is a state of mind. To be it, is the essence  
of moral, physical, and emotional lassitude. In brief, it's like being on ice. Playing
Sega is being juvy. Walking aimlessly is juvy. Vacant looks are not just juvy  
they're freaky, as in they freak people out. Don't believe me? Just ask Socrates. In
so many ways, no one else can tell you you're being it and how to get there  
because only you yourself know what brings you there.

So here you are. Being like Fonzie. Sitting back in the refreshing breeze. Everyone
likes a refreshing breeze, right? Except if you're locked outside your dead car in 
Winnipeg in January and it's too cold to snow. But for everyone else, you're  
breezing, chilling and that's that. You got some time on your hands and God's  
jealous because even He's got to be everywhere and all that and you, you've got 
nothing to do. So you open a drink. Coke, Sam Adams, some corporate shit but  
that's cool and the gang because that's what they're there for. Side lesson: don't  
get pissed off if someone out there is making money off you being happy. That's 
probably how you earned yourself this little piece of juvy heaven to start with. So
you're breezing, chilling down with a beverage, Paul's playing beverage music, 
and you're sitting back. You think about all that time when you were doing stuff 
and you said to yourself, "When I'm done, I'm going to do this and that and the 
other but I'm also going to kick back." So you don't feel guilty because you're 
doing one of those things you said you were going to do. Your feet are up, right?
Besides, some of those things are bloody impossible. Let's just take one from your
book. Yeah, you the workaholic/alcoholic. You're not that overweight, a little 
burnt out, can you say Hiroshima, and you're thinking back to 
one of those somethings 
you said you were going to do, "Get myself a girlfriend." Now boys and girls  
and girls and boys and I think I covered everyone, what's wrong with this  
picture? You're impossible to resist when you're jetsetting around, 
throwing money around, no girls around. But now you're back in a true social 
situation  and there are some prospects lurking. Ask yourself this, 
what do you 
have in your arsenal? "Say, let me tell you about that time I got my shoes shined 
at St. Louis Airport?" That isn't going to cut it. "Do you ever get that freaky 
thing happening with the Recalc button in a really big Excel spreadsheet?" Geek 
Hall of Famer there. Or, my personal favourite, "I read that taking your socks off 
even when you take a nap can help you get a more restful nap between shifts." 
She's going to want to jump into bed with you now, snore bunny. 
Let's just face it. You have no material. You're envious of someone like Jerry  
Seinfeld because all he does is nothing and he's accumulating material. You can't  
even do your impression of him anymore and besides he's passe and your Niles  
just isn't up to snuff     , let alone your Edina.     

So searching for material in a pressure packed situation where chances of success  
are lower than Gingrich and Gore swapping wives at a Palo Alto hot tub party, 
you're at a loss and there is very little you can do about it. Give up? That's one 
piece of advice but the juvy way is to say, don't sweat it. Someone will come 
along when you least expect it so you might as well kick back and, you guessed 
it, be juvy.

Let's tackle the issues of someone whose head is even more in the clouds. You all
know one of these types who at some point in their life, believe that the one 
good book inside them is bursting to come out. Maybe, during this time of time 
off, it's you. "I'm going to write a novel," you respond confidently to friends' 
queries as to what you are going to do when you're free. A novel, you say. You
 think that it shouldn't be so hard to write a novel; so you pick up a book that's 
lying about and open it up to the last page. 633. Well, that doesn't really count. 
He's a commercial novelist. He gets paid by the page. Let me find another novel. 
This time, you go into your schoolbook stash and take out a copy of    
The Stranger    by Camus,    Le Petit Prince    by Saint-
Exupery,    To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, and Heller's    Catch 22.  
You do the math in your 
head and you say to yourself, right, a good sized first novel should be 260 pages.
The number two hundred and sixty sticks in your head for a long time. Strange 
math and complicated time schedules that require Excel and more brain matter than 
you used in your last job   all to figure out just how many hours a day you need
 to write to finish it. The lucky number is seven. Seven hours a day is basically 
like a cushy job. Also, you can do it anywhere thanks to your newfangled power 
conserving laptop; but eventually you realize, the only way to make this work is to
 have seven hours of stuff to write about every day. Daunted by the task, you 
continue. A week later seven hours really worked out to be four. After a month, 
the average was down to two. Finally, you hit the end, page sixty three, and 
declare that you have nothing else to say and either abandon the project or add a 
horribly contrived ending that childishly sews up loose ends. At least you tried, 
you think.

Juviness is surfing. Netsurfing, right? Netscape is cool only if you're cool when  
you start. That's a bit of the problem. When you start out you surf and learn  
about all your hobbies and find people who like the same stuff and you're cool,  
you're connected. Soon, it's more than an hour a day, often three or four until  
finally, 
you don't bother logging out. One day, you look at your reflection in the screen 
and you ask yourself, "What are my hobbies again?" And you say, "I mean other 
than surfing the net?" It becomes a life unto itself. Viscious circle. Catch 22.

"Where do you want to go today?" Microsoft asks. Well, Billy boy, I don't really
 know if you'll understand because this juve thing, it's personal. And yet, 
amazingly, guess what software package I'm writing this juvy bible on? I know, 
Billy. I know you're laughing at me. You can't escape it.

Juviness can also be supplanted by a need to get in shape. So you decide you 
need to pick a sport. So you pick golf. A decision that's as good for the head as
 it is for the heart. But rather than go through the misery of instructional videos 
from your Uncle Joe and lessons from Aunt Martha's pro, you think you'll learn it
 on your own. That your true athletic ability will shine through and you'll be a 
natural before you know it. And that first time you stride up to a ball and you 
completely whiff it you look slightly embarrassed but you calmly replace the ball 
onto the tee and take a nice easy swing and paf the ball flies away, mind you 
with a slice, but a good way between the 150 and 200     markers     on the 
range. You think you're a natural after all and this time swing a lot harder and 
you ground out meekly to short. After a couple of weeks of some strange 
combination of driving range and mini putt you declare yourself a player, put your
 clubs in your trunk and say to yourself, "Now, I'll be ready, just in case."

The gist of the slacker way of life is to succumb to the desires of giving up just 
a whole lot earlier. Like before you even start. It's the notion that ideas will come
 to mind, be fermented in the sanctity of your imagination, and just die there on 
the drawing board. The essence of being alone is that it requires nothing more than
 yourself. You know where you are because you're right there. You know what 
you want to do because it's not what everyone else is doing. You know how to 
be yourself because you always are. Still sometimes, you think you want more. 
Like maybe you want to chronicle the life of someone you find interesting. Or a 
story makes you think. Or you're thinking about a way to be yourself, only better.
 If you thought the last one, go pick yourself up a box of Nice'n'Easy. They're 
on sale at Walgreens.

You can't run errands when you're being juvy because an errand implies that you 
erred and forgot to do something or pick something up; 
so you're making this short trip that maybe you could have avoided that will end 
up wasting a significant amount of time depending on the incompetence of the staff
 that awaits you wherever it is that you are going. So there can be no errands. 
It's okay to hang out at said drugstore and torment Walgreens staff by asking for 
the Neosporin after hiding all the six remaining tubes behind the Oil of Olay. Or, 
better yet, asking for Colgate but the     Wintergreen     Tartar Control with 
Baking Soda and Peroxide that prevents gingivitis. Or allowing yourself the 
privilege of thirteen consecutive free consultations with the Clairol/Revlon cosmetics 
computer style consultant. My personal favourite is pulling the UPC symbols off 
the promotional items and sending them along with the manufacturer's rebate 
coupon minus sales slip with a zealous note saying how much you like the product
, can I get my rebate please?
And when that routine starts getting stale, there's always Safeway. With a spring 
in your step, rush down the aisles, looking for the ideal guy/girl to bump into. 
Once you found her, don't just mindlessly smash your cart into hers while she's 
not looking. You've got to place your cart a few inches from hers with a small 
bag of flour sitting precariously on the edge so that when she moves her cart, 
incidentally touching yours (which if you've done it right is inevitable), the bag of 
flour will drop to the ground and she'll rush to its rescue. Then pretend that it's 
not just a bag of flour but it's a surrogate for a baby, an old trick you saw on  
  Frasier   , to get you used to the idea of how 
much effort it takes to take care of a baby. When she asks if you're thinking 
about becoming a father, you should balk bashfully and say, "Oh, no. I mean, 
hopefully one day when the right... The truth is that my sister and her husband 
want to go to the Caribbean for a two week vacation and I offered to take care of
 Junior." Caring meter hits a ten. Available meter is at 11. You're in 
like Flynn until you have to make up some excuse about how their hotel insisted  
that they bring the baby, blah, blah, blah.

Some of you may be thinking, "That's not for me. I'm not like that. I'm just 
your everyday slacker that sits on the couch and doesn't really have any grandiose 
plans that I don't fulfill. I aim low." For all of you out there who concur, think 
about what you were doing this morning at eleven a.m. This is a clear sign of 
whether or not you have any ambition  to get up and do anything in your life at 
all. First, let's disqualify all of those people who aren't even at home at eleven 
because they had stuff to do or places to go. You're not being juvy, you're being
 busy. Next, let's disqualify all those who are still asleep because except for the 
exceptional twelve hour a day sleeper/slacker, if you're still not up at eleven, you 
had too good a time the night before. You're not rejuvenating, you're replenishing.
 Finally, that leaves all the rest of you who are awake and still a bit groggy and 
just finished your Pop Tarts but too early to have your salami on rye so you 
might as well suck down your Diet Coke while figuring out if there's anything 
you're going to do today. Because at eleven o'clock, you're thinking that you 
actually have a shot at starting something. It's early, you can pack a lunch and 
make your way down to the train station and watch to see if that 11:45 from 
Philadelphia really does have a sleeper car or not. 
The pedantic but  sedentary adventurer sets themselves the goal of learning a new 
language. This one is particularly interesting because it is well intentioned, cuts 
across broad social demographics, and is almost impossible to do without leaving 
the house. There are just so many    Manon des Sources    movies to practice 
French (besides Gerard Depardieu can use a few elocution 
lessons) and Tele Espana and MTV Latino hardly make a dent past the basic eat,  
sleep, swear and sex Spanish words you picked up in high school. Tapes fail  
miserably and reading books with the dictionary handy are about as much fun as  
replacing your condom at every third thrust. "I should have taken that French  
culture class in Lyon," you say, and you're absolutely right.
A great winner slacker move is to say, this summer, I'm going to catch up on all
 the great movies I missed. Forget Hollywood schlop and concentrate on the  
Miramax led independent group. So, you start renting and soon enough you're  
getting into it and you're simultaneously impressing and annoying your friends by  
constantly asking, "Have you seen that great Polish director's latest movie about   
 this and that colour    and coming of age?" And they shake their heads  
and either say, "I meant to!" or, "No." So, you're getting good at this, making  
your way through 1994    Time Out   guide five star flicks when you start  
striking up conversations with the guy at Blockbuster and you see that you're  
getting a lot of good advice and insight from him so you invite him over to watch
 one with you and then another after work until it becomes a bit of a routine and 
you think he's sort of cute the way he keeps brushing his hair out of his eyes  
during the tense moments of the movie so you make a move on him and he  
accepts and before you know it, you're in bed together and you have this regular 
sex thing and movies have fallen out of the spotlight until you realize that things  
are getting too comfortable and the clincher is that one night you have this  
premonitionary dream about the two of you married and you both come home,  
order up a pay per view and pop some popcorn and suddenly, every night for the
 rest of your life is a Blockbuster night.
Then I know there are a few slackers in the crowd who say they're going to try  
to be more 
literate. Which doesn't necessarily mean learning the alphabet because supposedly  
you have a Master's in English from Iowa; but rather, you want to read what's  
important. While book clubs aren't your thing, you start making your way back on
 the Pulitzer and Booker prize list, reading the runner up because more often than 
not, they're the better book. Eventually, you start making your way into the  
classics but rather than pick indiscriminately through the multitudes, you define  
yourself  as an event driven reader. It fits well with your history because you read 
Brave New World 
for the first time during the week of the birth of the first test tube baby. You  
finished 
Orwell's classic on New Year's Eve 1984. You even read  Bright Lights, Big City
    while you were 
drunk in some East Village bar, already late for your seven o'clock Goldman Sachs
 breakfast meeting.   
Problem is, there aren't many of these events.     So you look around the  
shelves, look at your watch and notice it's August 24, 1995 and you pick up    
Microserfs. Next on the list is 2001 
and you're saving Dante for just before you die.

Lately, you've been thinking about selling out, and all the money you could make 
doing so ,  but rather than be portrayed as a ignorant American fool on     
The Real World   , you decide you can 
make a living by putting up your life on the Net. A sort of Anne Frank for the  
nineties, except without the occupation, oppression, or insight. You make yourself 
your first web page and you put your favourite links down until finally you realize
 that you better add some content, so you step back and hyperlink your way to   
 The Semi Existence of Bryon    and you give up because  he's 
already done it and made it way better than anything you could have. Imagine the 
genius of naming one of your cats 'Sweetie, Darling!'
By this point, I've probably covered the vast majority of the slacker group and  
I've decided that you folks are far better at being juvy than I gave you credit for. 
The aimless idolatry of Winona Ryder and Trent Raznor, the gossip of Courtney  
Love, the Absolutely Fabulous and Mork & Mindy reruns, the endless search for a
pair of Doc Martens under seventy bucks, the glorification of anything insubstantial
 and the loathing of anything character building is what's going to keep us slack  
forever. By the way, someone pointed out to me en route that juve actually is 
 short for juvus, the old Roman/Latin word for life. So actually "Rejuvenate" could
 be translated to "Get a Life!" But I'd rather translate it to mean that to be juvy is
 the real way to live.

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