I have two computer monitors at work.  Sometimes I wish I had three, or four, or as many as I could possibly fit within the rotational range of my neck.

I am, like all cubicle monkeys, a master of simultaneous activity.

If a coworker doesn’t immediately answer my chat question, I turn to my other monitor to shoot an email to a client, and while it sends, I “thumbs down” that terrible song Pandora has the audacity to suggest to me a second time.  During all of these activities I have also been processing a long list of data changes.  It takes about three seconds for the screen to refresh between each update, and I have been making the most of that time.

At the office, my efficiency is an asset.  I can fragment my mind into a billion tiny rooms and dart in and out of them at lightning speed.  The problem is, my multi-tasking has spilled over into my actual life, and I find this very disturbing.

I used to be able to just watch television.  I could watch HOURS of America’s Next Top Model with my roommates while slightly hungover on a Sunday.  This is not a program that requires 100% of one’s brainpower.

Now I have trouble watching TV without engaging in another activity as well.  I feel guilty if I’m not also paying bills or folding laundry.  It’s not like my inability to give my full attention to Tyra Banks is a tragedy, but that’s just one example.  And this constant state of distractedness is really getting in the way of my meaningful idle time.

I wasn’t always this way.  I spent a year of my life in AmeriCorps, a public service program that drains the optimism out of young do-gooders by having them spend 24 hours a day working and living in small spaces with the same group of people, whilst forbidding their consumption of drugs and alcohol.   At the time it felt like being in a chain gang or a cult.  Or on communist Russia’s version of the Real World.   I woke up in the morning and put on the same uniform as my teammates – a gray shirt and khaki cargo pants that after a year of filthy jobs and infrequent washing became a single, brownish hue. The day’s work usually involved some sort of digging, or hammering, or most often, standing around waiting for instructions.

We had one vehicle and a team of nine, so even the most basic life tasks, like laundry and grocery shopping, were a slow, all-day, collaborative affair.  Life administration was managed as a collective, so my personal choices were reduced to things as important as, “should I wear my dirty shirt, or my slightly less dirty shirt today?”

What I didn’t realize at the time was that this total lack of autonomy, this forced inefficiency, was awesome.  It completely freed me from the responsibilities and worries of a real adult.  In the real world, I had a job that required my focused attention, and I dutifully carried out the tasks of a normal functioning citizen (going to the post office, showering once a day, etc.).  In AmeriCorps, these things were out of my control.  I couldn’t even leave my house in the evening unless eight other people decided to mobilize, so I had loads of idle time.  I frequently engaged in activities that feel impossible in the real world, like writing letters by hand and sitting quietly.  Multi-tasking in AmeriCorps would have been ridiculous – you needed to make every activity last.

On top of this, we were stationed in the rural Midwest, which moves slower than California in general.  Here we’re all about utility conversations.  When the checker at a California grocery store asks you how you are, you are expected to say, “Fine, and you?” and that’s it.  Pleasantries exchanged, social obligation met, conversation over.  When a checker asks my Wisconsin-native girlfriend how she is, she gives a detailed account of our afternoon while everyone behind us in line silently fumes.

In AmeriCorps we worked for several months on a nature conservancy in western Iowa.  Once we were on the way back to the shop at the end of a long workday when our truck was approached by an elderly farmer from an adjacent property.  In California, we would have waved and swerved around him.  In rural Iowa, we stopped the pickup and fully removed the keys from the ignition so he and my supervisor could have the following conversation, which went on, without exaggeration, for twenty minutes:

“It’s been a warm fall” – pause and pensive nodding – “plenty-a wind though” – pause and pensive nodding – “you hear much from Paula?” – pause and pensive head shaking – “Nah, not lately”…and so on.

If I had been less hangry, and feeling less oppressed by my perceived lack of independence at the time, I think I would have been able to appreciate, as I do now, how nice this all was.

Life in AmeriCorps was slow, and manual labor was mindless.  I had no real responsibilities to tend to or decisions to make; nothing to do but truly consider the world around me.  I began to notice and genuinely love the prairie, for its calm, simple beauty and sameness, as uncomplicated and easygoing as the Iowans themselves.

I now idealize what AmeriCorps forced me to do, before I let my dual monitors and constant sense of business turn me into the guy from Memento.  I’m trying to remind myself that it’s okay to relinquish control, to forgo the to-do list for something less “important”, like watching America’s Next Top Model without a computer in my lap.  Or just stopping for a minute to appreciate life.