IF THEN, WHAT IF? or THE ONE WITH ALL THE QUESTIONS

There was a commercial on TV today, a plug for a cable company, and for some reason, it affected me. It was about a man who previously had no free time because he spent most of it obsessing over the lack of channels he was getting (and, really, who doesn't mourn their Sundance Channel-less existence?). Then it cuts to the same man, sitting on a park bench, working on a crossword puzzle. Apparently, he got the hook up (hah, get it? get it?) and now he has all the time in the world ... to sit on park benches and work on crossword puzzles.

Seeing this TV ad made me think:
I have cable
I am happy with it
therefore
I should be happy (or at least, be able to sit in the sun and waste time trying to figure out what's a three-letter word for pottery)

With this logic, I'm not happy. I don't go out of my way to sit in the park, much less do crosswords (I'd much rather read the comics.) I don't even put to full use my great cable hook up. In fact, I think I could live without the extraneous channels since all I watch now are Conan O'Brien and (per usual) lame dating shows.

What does this mean? I guess the question I should ask is: where is all my free time going? I don't even think I have 'free time'. I wish I could just go for a coffee or a drink. Or a walk. Oh, don't get me wrong. I do walk. But it's to get to places, like from class to class, or from the bus stop to my apartment. Once in a while (like twice) my roommate and I would walk home from uptown, and it would be nice because I'd have time to look around at the houses and notice little things, like the way the air is starting to smell and feel like autumn, or that I should get bigger sized shoes because my feet have spread from all the goddamn walking.

Suffice it to say, my priorities are really fucked up right now. I'd rather sit out and draw happy little trees than sit inside and listen to my Linguistics professor talk about morphemes? I remember this one time, my freshman year. I skipped Psych 111 to sit outside under a tree and paint. It was middle of October, so all the leaves were nice altering shades of orange and brown, and it was sunny but not hot, and I had jeans and a shirt on, and the cotton wasn't sticking to my back. I'd watch people walking in and out of the dorm, and some of them would stop and sit with me for a bit. I liked that. I liked how everything was stretched out and slow, and I'd have time to let things sink in. How did I do that? I constantly joke about having no concept of time, yet it was exactly what made me cope with loneliness, stress and exhaustion. Was I more self-aware now than I am then?

I'm driving myself silly. Sometimes I just wish for that great white fuzz known as oblivion.