Sick of Thinking

Having read lots and lots of thick Victorian books in preparation for qualifying exams, and faced with the prospect of reading lots more thick Victorian books, medium-to-thick 20th century British works, and a bunch of scientific literature from the 19th to 20th century (British, of course), I'm frankly sick of it all. In my leisure time, I don't think I can take reading anything where I have to follow some sort of sustained plot or get invested in characters and their development, no matter how fascinating.

Needless to say, reading novels for "for fun" is right out. Boo to reading for fun, for the present.

Here is a list of some activities I have engaged in lately, to show how I am now striving to become a complete Philistine in my free time:

1. Watching "Montel" while ironing clothes. This particular episode featured mothers who have young, psychotic children with violent tendencies. "I know it seems hopeless," Montel told those mothers, "But I want you know that help is out there, that something can be done."

"Oh, hang in there you brave, brave mothers!" I cried in the depths of my heart as tears stained my freshly ironed shirts.

2. Browsing through food blogs and recipe databases online. I find this very soothing in particular...no plot, no tropes or metaphors (to be redundant), no underlying themes. Just straightforward recipes and descriptions of various attempts to do creative things with interesting ingredients. Although, can you imagine if recipes had symbolic content?

Recipe for Zucchini-Carrot Bread*

*zucchini being a symbol for despair, and carrot being a metaphor for sexual desire.

3. Staring into space. I really enjoy doing this nowadays. Sometimes I'll shut my eyes too so it feels kind of like sleep.

4. Reading TIME magazine. Okay, I suppose this requires some cerebral activity...but it doesn't require sustained attention to plot and themes and character development for 400 pages. And TIME really isn't that brain-twisting.