Day 0068

I'm feeling very untethered from life at the moment. I don't have a favourable way to measure my progress, my growth as a person, my worth as a citizen. At the moment, all of the socially normative indicators of success I have aren't looking terribly positive. Usually you can turn to your bank balance, your performance at work or your exam results at school to get some kind of sense of self-worth. Whilst these metrics might not actually mean anything (nor tell you anything about your moral self), they can at least give you a comforting illusion of growth, which in itself is worthwhile if it makes you feel better about yourself.

When I look back at this project, which is itself an attempt to inject some meaning into my idleness, I see how lazy I have been, and how often I have left the drawing to the last minute so nothing is learned and nothing is improved. Likewise with reading and reflecting. The one thing I have at the moment is time, and yet I spend the entire day in aimless reverie, not in thinking concertedly or creating or achieving anything.

Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure. To replace thought by reverie is to confound poison with nourishment.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

My thoughts are directionless, nebulous, unproductive. I sometimes wonder whether I used my free time better when I had a day job to strain against. When free time is no longer a precious commodity it is too easy to squander it.

Today's drawing is after Leonardo's study for the head of St Philip in the Last Supper.