Living Fat

Oh help me,

If there is any power in the rivers.

Change and destroy the body which has given

Too much delight!

Those were Daphne's final words before she gently transformed into a laurel tree. Afraid of Apollo chasing her, she begs Nature to neutralize the flesh that has overpowered her. Daphne had the restraint to will her skin to bark and settle deep into the forest floor. The body was her enemy and pleasure the ultimate taboo.

I’m not into that.

I recently picked up Michael Flocker’s The Hedonism Handbook at a used bookstore on a lark. The design was retro and the writing seemed clever enough so I spent a few hours with it out by the pool sucking the juice from nectarines. The main point was this: Daphne may have escaped, but then she had to spend the rest of her existence as a tree.

Unemployment leaves a lot of time on your hands. There are a lot of negative emotions that go along with that. We feel useless, lost, and a little like failures. But we’re not. We’re free. Recent grads are about to spend nearly fifty years in the workforce waiting. That stark reality shades this unemployment period in a new light. It’s not a tragedy, it’s an interim; simply a break between two things.

We’re familiar with breaks: they divide the first and second half of the semester fitting in a convenient little space for either the slopes or the tropics. I spent the first few weeks of this break getting serious and feeling down on myself. What is the point of that?
There are only so many jobs out there and it’s great to apply to each one you might be interested in. Follow-up calls, research, and resume-boosting activities are all great ideas, but they don’t make up a life. Too many grads spend a little time looking and the rest of it feeling like crap. Lying by the TV, trying to forget the reality of our situations, we forget ourselves.

Flocker says that the key is to be sure that you’re spending your time enjoying your life and not anybody else’s. We all have time to be a little hedonistic. Unscheduled travel, spontaneous cocktails, and luxurious outings can be fit into even our tiny budgets, especially if we cut the greasy fast fare out of the picture and save up for the petit filet.

But on a day to day basis, there’s so much to do and enjoy. Long walks in the park, incredible literature, deep French kisses, and great conversation come cheap. When a job comes along (and don’t worry, it will), I know I’m going to spend my time trying to pencil all that in. Right now I’m letting it come easily. Cheap wine, good books, and hot friends could keep me going forever. I think we forget that we had just about as much free time in school as we do now. The difference is that then we felt great and now we feel lousy. So I’m going to give up the drear and dive into bliss. From now on, I’m sticking to Ovid’s cheeriest yarns accompanied by raspberries and double vodka Red Bulls. Classic.