Hi friends. For the next two weeks of episodes, the poet and writer Victoria Chang will be sharing

her selections and reflections. I'll return on April 8th. I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown. I miss being bored. I miss idly sitting in a chair looking out at a window

wondering what next to do with myself.

On 2214 Ingersaw Street, as a boy, I stared out over rooftops.

I listened to street noise, rise up to my bedroom. The sounds made me restless.

Sounds of kids up the block slapping a rubber ball against a wall or sitting on a stoop playing the dozens.

I want my boredom back.

I want the feeling of time as an endless desert, nothing in sight, nothing on the horizon.

Today my life is busy, busier than a city intersection with a broken stoplight and people

dodging honking cars across the street. More frustrating, the helplessly sitting in 12 miles of

traffic on a major highway waiting for a collision to be cleared. My brain endlessly spins like the rotating drum of a huge cement truck,

even while asleep it seems. Back in a day when I had time on my hands I spent hours

daydreaming. Bored, I populated my inner life with people I didn't know.

Celebrities who fueled my ambition to become, say, a basketball star or business mogul. I imagined befriending characters from books I read.

I made up stories featuring myself on the other side of success, kicking back poolside on a lounge chair,

surveying the fruits of my labor.

Those moments of On We triggered my imagination.

Is it possible that an unerring drive

eradicates any chance of true ease in one's lifetime?

That a quest towards career goals means maintaining a schedule that is always on go rather than

on pause.

...