Finding pleasant surprises in idleness: An NYSC memoir

My colleagues are all getting excited. Many have gained experience and are equipped to face the real world. They can’t wait to enter the labor market. Thinking about myself, I feel like a warrior from the battle field with no stories to tell. There isn’t much I would say I have achieved during this period, […]

My colleagues are all getting excited. Many have gained experience and are equipped to face the real world. They can’t wait to enter the labor market. Thinking about myself, I feel like a warrior from the battle field with no stories to tell. There isn’t much I would say I have achieved during this period, exclusive of becoming a ‘super lazybones’ due to idleness. But a great artist says “it’s mostly the unexpected that brings showers to the flowers.”
Talking of idleness, the last few months have been my most ‘still’ period. The idle days started immediately the school days were over. After the final exams and project ups and downs, I was left with nothing to do. At first I was excited, doing nothing seemed fun after four years of school torment. There was that sense of accomplishment that comes with making it through college. At last, it was all over, no more assignments, tests, exams. The couch became my best friend and social networking my hobby. I had nothing else to do.
Gradually the idleness started making me a slacker. I couldn’t imagine doing anything other than lying down all day. Thinking about it now, I wonder how I made it through college; for now, getting out in itself requires a great deal of courage equal to the one needed in moving a mountain. I have become so indolent I sometimes feel I could be passed for a bag of potatoes.  Conversely, I had been very ambitious back in school. Women like Okonjo-Iweala, Farida Waziri and female ambassadors were my role models. I had been imagining being active, responsible, focused and all that it takes. I however know it’s a far cry from what I am now. The holidays seem to have redirected me.
Due to my newfound laziness, when the NYSC orientation camp began, I felt so bitter it stung like a bee. I had to get a permit on some basis and leave for home. I couldn’t cope with the little ‘freedom of sleep’. Yet, quitting was never an option for me. Regardless of everything, I intended to recompense and regain my composure with the primary assignment. Unfortunately, I was posted to an infant organization with low-level activity, making it seem like it has over staffed itself and had no need for a Youth Corper.  I was again left an idler. My slothfulness in turn increased drastically while I spend my days on the couch. Call me pathetic, but I do nothing and enjoy it, I never get tired of being so. I have never been lazier. I now appreciate my having little to do in the primary assignment place, I sometimes feel obliged to pop a drink and celebrate my good fortune.
However, anything that has an advantage has a disadvantage and vice versa. While being idle has its major drawbacks, there are similarly voluminous perks attainable from the unattractive lifestyle. It may have seemed to make me slouch, but there are other positive benefits I procured through it that I couldn’t have otherwise. To begin with, since childhood I had been a curious child and so became more engrossed in what is going on around the world. I tended to read anything I could get my hands on: magazines, newspapers, brochures, articles and watching movies, documentaries and reality shows. I learned that, apart from serving as a means of relaxation, there is a great deal of knowledge to be obtained through informal education. This informal education encompasses learning more about ideas, theories, language, places, history and so on. In addition, it bred the idea of writing in me.
I do not mean anything academic or professional, but the fact that it is easy for one to engage in blogging and social networking provides an arena for releasing ideas. Also, my new way of life coupled with my curiosity induces me to carry out a lot of researches. Whenever I get curious enough to take the trouble finding out about something, I hit the ‘internet’. This in turn inflates my awareness about a variety of things. Moreover, having nothing to do engender the initiative of fashion designing in me – couture! Although I had for a long time been into it, designing my own apparel, attractive ideas keep coming to me as I lay on the couch.
I am inclined to be more creative and innovative presently. Likewise, I have also become more attuned to my body, being proactive about my health, taking care of whatever illness that comes before it becomes a huge problem. Moreover, the seemingly uninviting lifestyle sparked the concept of entrepreneurship in me. It aides me see my potentialities and how much I can achieve doing things. I seldom do things, but when I do, I do them impeccably. As converse to laziness being regarded as an ugly trait, perhaps there is more to it. A positive effect, maybe? Perhaps it is how one looks at it or it is as chemists say: ‘For every action, there is an equal opposite reaction’.
Baiwa wrote in No. 40 Mahalli Street, Rijiyar Zaki Gabas, Kano State, and can be reached at: [email protected]