Misspent youth

After seeing Sexy Daniel Craig: The Movie on Saturday, Sun and I were walking back up to our respective homes when she said that she wanted to be able to look back at a misspent youth, because in a lot of biographies of people she'd read, they did exactly that, with little regret.

I asked her what that meant to her, and she said that it meant having a good time, enjoying youth, not worrying about the future or what it all leads to, not worrying about what today's actions will mean for tomorrow's resume.

Now that's an admirable goal. I like that (although misspent youth to me sounds more like sex, drugs and rock 'n roll). I think by Sun's definition, my youth was indeed misspent, wandering around to different cities and jobs, never thinking more than a year or two ahead -- or more accurately, never letting it affect the decisions to move to the next job or the next city.

The thinking behind coming to HK was to try capital markets work and live in Asia again for a little while (and to have a little change so that I didn't burn out as fast as a corporate lawyer). But not having any work (and I do mean NO work) has really thrown me for a loop. It's all well and good to have your free time on the weekends and after work, but if you do nothing at work all day and then have to amuse yourself outside of work as well -- well, that's too much freedom, and I feel more secure when I've got some walls around me.

What do I do all day at work? Well you may ask.

9:45-10 am. Roll in. Check work email. Check personal email. Check Facebook. Check fun blogs. Read NY Times.

11 am. Check to see who's online in the NY office. Chat with them for a while, then apologize for keeping them on IM when they're working late, and say goodbye.

11:30 am. Time for a stroll around the office. Ask partners and associates if they have any work. Chat with coworkers, complain that I'm dying of boredom.

11:45 am. Return to desk, read Salon or CNN or The Economist online.

12:30 pm. Hopefully, go to lunch or a in-house seminar. If not, mope at desk and consider reading a treatise. At around 1, give up and get some lunch.

2 pm. Return to desk and read more papers online, consider plans for weekend.

3 pm. Get up and stroll around some more, complain again about being bored. Take a banana from the fruit basket and eat.

3:45 pm. Pull out treatise and read about 3 pages before turning back to internets.

4 pm. Officemate calls out, "How's it going over there? Busy?" I call back, "Extremely busy. Please be quiet and stop bothering me." Proceed to either play Word Mole with officemate, ask him about something vaguely related to work, ask him about restaurant recommendations, or check out something amusing on his computer.

4:30 pm. IM Stegmaier, "McDonalds run?" (Sometimes receive IM from Stegmaier: "Caffeine... need caffeine...")

5:15 pm. Return to desk, consider plans for that evening. See if I can recognize anyone from the NY Times wedding announcements.

6 pm. Bounce.

Now you might think this sounds good, and yes, you're right, it's not a day in the mines or anything like that. But I've had five weeks of this schedule! That's enough to try anyone's patience.

What I need is a guiding principle. A project and a motto. And I will think of both, right after this episode of Chuck playing now on AXN.