When I was 19 I took a year off and although I did do some
useful stuff like learning to type and working in Germany for a few months, I spent
most of the time between September and April lazing around eating pizza,
watching videos, drinking tea and playing the occasional game of squash.
One of the things I did during the time I was bumming around
was to make a board game with a friend called ‘Year Off’. It was supposed to be an antidote to the
whole ethos of having a year off which seemed to involve going off to dig
drainage ditches in Botswana, going trekking in the Himalayas, or generally
being productive etc.
One of the features of the game was the Apathy Square. It was basically a hole in the board and if
you landed on it you just gave up playing because you couldn’t be bothered to
go on any more. The game also featured a
Big Bed and if you landed on that, you just went to sleep.
At the time I didn’t realise it, but both the Apathy Square and
the Big Bed are my natural habitat. I
could quite easily go through the whole of life asleep or in an apathetic
stupor.
Thankfully I know some people, and they know some other
people, and a lot of these people have enthusiasm for doing things. And sometimes I get pushed into doing things
with them, or sometimes I just get carried along with their enthusiasm and before
I know it I’m joining in and thinking up stuff to do too.
Left to my own devices I would probably just hang around near the fridge and not go out, so it's a good thing I have friends, or I would soon be a likely candidate for a Channel 5 documentary called Giant Fridge Man or something similar.
