the other day on the metro, i saw a guy wearing a button that said "are you free?" (etes-vous libres?). it's funny because i remember being quite ambivalent about how to answer that question then, but it think i am less so now. not that things have changed a great deal since then, but well, maybe my outlook on them has.

i've been in between three jobs now for the past month or so. gradually fazing out of the employment counselor deal, into a mix of sub-teaching and guided tours. i think the transience of this state makes me feel free. the fact that i get called or emailed on an ongoing basis and asked if i want to work that day or that day... and things really depend on what i want to do. not on what my boss wants me to do, not on what crazy thing my client might want me to do by this ridiculous deadline.

as silly as it is, i feel as though i am free when i am not taken for granted. i am free when y. and i chose to spend an evening together, not when we both expect each other to. i am free when i walk in a classroom full of kids and know that i wanted to be there, that i agreed to this.

i think the 9-to-5 grind makes me forget about the fact that i can make choices. everyone expects, and i do to, me to show up at 9 every morning. it would not even cross my mind not to. and by those means i forget that that was initially a conscious decision. i basically surrender the choice of what time i get up/commute/go to bed/eat/have fun with friends based on a decision that someone else made, about what regular working hours should be.

it's funny, i remember thinking in my communist-teenage-years about how work was essentially on contract between a boss and an employee that enabled people to buy/sell their time. mind you, i was working a data entry job then and derived little pleasure out of typing names and addresses of places i'd probably never even see. but when i think back on this, though, years later i still think their is some truth to it. truth to the fact that i can chose not to sell some of my time when what i get in return is not worth a sunny breezy spring afternoon.