My manager was out today, and I didn't have any work to do.

So I read all of Voltaire's Candide online. I read it for the first time today, though it was a recommended read by someone I knew briefly around two years ago. I won't take the time to give you my review of the story, but will say it was much more entertaining than today's news.

And I will give you this quote from the last chapter:
"I would be glad to know which is worst, to be ravished a hundred times by Negro pirates, to have one buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fe, to be dissected, to be chained to an oar in a galley; and, in short, to experience all the miseries through which every one of us hath passed, or to remain here doing nothing?"

It's a great quote, notwithstanding the bit of racism in the beginning of it, because just yesterday night I told Babe that it dawned on me earlier in the day that being paid to do nothing here at work actually feels worse than being paid to do something I don't like doing. If I was actually doing work, and it was work that I didn't like doing, getting paid to do it would more or less justify spending so much of my time doing it instead of doing what I'd rather be doing. But getting paid to do nothing does not, since I could be doing anything else, especially something I'd rather be doing, with that time, though I may not get paid to do it.

Time lost to doing nothing seems like more of a loss. I don't need to tell you that it's better to be doing something than nothing. And I don't need to tell you that life is too short too not try to make the most out of every moment. However, needing to be paid as much as I am being paid now to do nothing is forcing me to do nothing. And that's my fucking dilemma.