Non-reading

I've been spending what seems like an outrageous amount of time reading box scores and articles on espn.com recently, and I've started to wonder why. It's not like I'm that interested in the results or anything. Certainly I am an Eagles fan, and I have read with some disappointment about this season where the "Iggs" have managed to loose all of their pro bowl players to either injury or what I feel can only be described as "being TO." However, I'm used to watching the games every Sunday, and reading about them just doesn't carry the same sort of emotions.

And I've been reading about basketball as well. Usually the NBA season doesn't start to interest me very much until at least the early spring, but I've been reading about it almost every day. There must be some reason that I spend so much time pouring over the sports websites. I don't think it's because I'm looking for something to do. On days when I teach, I have plenty of class to worry about, plus my meetings with students, English table, taiji class and sports (playing sports that is). I increasingly think that the main reason I spend so much time at espn.com, as well as reading music reviews and web comics, is that I don't have enough to not-do.

My mom has always stressed the importance of having enough down-time. I think that I have built enough down-time into my schedule here, and occasionlly a little too much. The thing about down-time is that it is still filled with activities of a sort; most people don't spend their downtime just sitting staring into space. This is the time that is filled with conversations about nothing important (gossip, music, sports), by watching TV (Scrubs, Arrested Development, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, sports), by reading (Time, the Phoenix, random stuff on the internet). In China, those non-activities are all harder to come by.

Conversations with Chinese students are usually a little more like work than non-work, and they don't know anything about the music I like or about football. TV here is in Chinese, hence a real activity, and is usually really bad. I do watch the occasional show on my computer, but download times are excessive. Plus half the point of watching TV is watching it with friends so we can make new in-jokes and eat hoagies or Quaker Oatmeal Squares (both unavailable in China). Throw-away reading material is also a little scarce and I'm making all-too-fast progress through my latest shipment of books, both quick-reading novels and slower-but-still-too-quick- reading history books. So I spend an inordinate amount of time reading online: the New York Times, various blogs and music sites and...espn.com.

I have a more interesting post about god complexes that will need to wait a while. I'm kinda tired of writing today; I spent about six hours writing for a project that is not yet ready to see the light of day (Wednesday is my day off teaching). So here's some non-writing to tide you over until I post something more worthwhile, I'm gonna go do some more non-reading.