Some days I feel like I barely know whatI'm doing myself, much less being able to teach anybody else anything. But after talking with Chicagoan Earl Welther recently, who is involved in a group that mentors young men, I wondered—and not for the first time—whether I should get involved in doing some mentoring.
But, as always, I come up against the question, Where would I find the time? I seem always to be busy. But other people have busy lives, and they find time to mentor—why can't I? I thought it might be instructive to see what I'm spending my time on instead of mentoring.
Obviously, working full time takes up a lot of time, as do myriad irritating little household chores and errands. And I do occasionally, as a writer, need actually to write. But just what, exactly, am I spending the rest of my time on? Here is a far-from-comprehensive list.
1. Holding a hot compress to the dog's ass. Thankfully, we're not presently doing that, but not long ago, we were spending at least two 15-minute sessions a day with a hand cupped over a hot, wet washcloth over a burst cyst on Nacho's butt. And that doesn't count the time it took to get him to lie cyst-side up. I could render a long list of the many other unpretty activities with which we've engaged since getting two dogs, but in deference to the possibility that you might be eating a meal while reading this, I will spare you the details.
2. Clipping coupons. I try to be efficient about this, clipping coupons while performing some other important task ( watching Will & Grace, for example ) , but the fact remains that this is time-consuming and mentally draining work: How do I balance the delight of possibly saving 50 cents with the 120 extra grams of fat that eating a package of Klondike bars would entail? What is the likelihood that we will need another 48-ounce bottle of ketchup in the next month? Is it worth buying a tub of peanut butter, which we rarely eat, to save $1 when you also buy a pound of bananas, which we regularly eat?
3. Looking at Orvis or Wireless catalogs. While I enjoy flipping through the pages of almost any clothing or food or tchotchke catalog, what's the point? We almost never buy anything from those catalogs because who really needs a $395 Italian tooled pewter wastebasket or an 18-inch $169 decorative pintail duck decoy anyway? And speaking of pointless activities:
4. Watching the Cubs play.
5. Ironing clothes. When I actually did iron my clothes, it took up an enormous amount of time, but too many people have seen me in public for me to get away with the lie that I currently engage in that activity. During my brief relapse into corporate employeeism, I tried to be both a diligent and cheerful ironer, but the toll it took on me—the stress of getting seams lined up properly, the heat exhaustion on summer nights—was beginning to show. Ever wise, my gal Kathy said to me, "You know how everyone in an office has a certain persona? You can be the person who doesn't iron." I have embraced that persona, taking on the rumpled look of a shar-pei once again, and am now spending the time that used to be for ironing ...
6. Putting holes in the walls, trying to put up a shelf or brackets or a hook and then discovering that I've lined up the screws unevenly or the dry wall won't hold a 25-pound bust of Martina Navratilova.
7. Spackling and painting over the holes I've left in the drywall. This isn't something I so much do as something I mean to do.
8. Stain-sticking laundry. For an adult with no children, I spend a surprising amount of time on this activity. In a year, Kathy and I probably accumulate enough residual foodstuffs on our clothing to feed a starving child in some poverty-stricken land or a contestant on Survivor. I don't think that we're especially sloppy eaters, but tomato sauce, olive oil, and blackberry smoothies seem to have incredible leaping abilities. Now I just take it as a matter of course, like my great-aunts who, when I'm lunching with them, are routinely heard to say, upon finding a food morsel lodged on one of their "shelves" ( i.e., ledge-like chests ) , "Gonna have to stain stick that," before quite calmly taking another bite of food.
You can see now what a fulfilling and intellectually stimulating life I lead and why I might not have time for mentoring. But the truth is, of course, that I'm simply making excuses: if I made mentoring a priority in my life, I would find time for it—just like I find time for reading the latest issue of TV Guide or dancing with my gal in the kitchen. It's simply a matter of making up my mind, and then doing it. I'm a slow decision maker, but I'll get there. Because in the long run, I don't want to be known simply as "the one who doesn't iron." I want to be known as "the one who doesn't iron and is a mentor."
yzipter@journals.uchicago.edu .