adulthood Archives - Faith and the Other Five Senses

Tip #1: Do something unproductive, and enjoy it.

We’re adults now, which means we have jobs. And, unless we have the good fortune of being artists, our workplaces can suck us into the black hole of productivity. If we’re not careful, the work week (whether it comes packaged in forty, sixty, or eighty hours) can morph us into human doers—people who compulsively check our schedules while gulping down cereal and who send work emails from the bathroom at night

Photo courtesy of Sander Smeekes via unsplash.com

Lessons from the Other Half

The Doctrine of Productivity affects us all, but our married friends have an advantage. They go home to human beings that require them to be unproductive (a.k.a. spouses).

Just think about it. If married people want to stay married, they have to invest time (and plenty of it) in rather non-productive behaviors. They have to leave work to get home for dinner. Their spouses make them put down their phones and have real conversations. They go on date nights. And, then there’s sex—which, considering the number of kids most couples have, is rather unproductive Continue Reading…

Certain moments make me feel the glow of adulthood—sitting at a mahogany desk while a mortgage broker rattles off numbers, tracing my finger across the black letters on a business card, “Shannon Gianotti, FNP-C”, and driving myself to DFW Airport last Saturday.

The night before my flight home, I still didn’t have plans for getting to the airport. I’ld procrastinated on that part of the trip, because…well…nobody really wants to drive to the airport at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday. And, it’s been spring in Dallas, which—as my friend Dan likes to say—“is the two weeks of the year when Texas actually feels like Heaven.”

“Travellers” by chiaralilly (licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0, modified by Shannon Gianotti)

So, between cranking out a twenty-page research paper for BE102 and writing a pitch for my latest article—I watered my cilantro plants, reacquainted myself with the pool, and neglected fishing around for a ride. By Friday night I was cornered into doing something I’ve never done before, something that (in my mind) only business people do—finding long-term parking near the airport.

Considering my travelog, airport parking shouldn’t be a big deal. I’ve eaten rice by hand in a bedouin tent near the Syrian border, hiked solo in the mountains of Korea, and spent a layover in Hong Kong sleeping under the seats in the terminal.