Teens need dose of leisure rather than hit of work

It's not that I'm a workaholic. I'm not addicted to workohol. In fact, I don't even like it that much. Yet somehow I end up smashed all the time anyway.

There are other kids like me. We'd be content with a steady job and decent grades. Somehow we end up taking on so much more, seemingly just because we can.

Teens don't really want to study hard, maintain a job and get involved in extracurricular activities. Of course, we want the rewards that these things promise, namely college. But we have to work for it, so the stress just builds up until we forget why we were trying so hard in the first place.

The reason for this perceived obligation to do more than whatever it takes is simply that we live in a country where it is possible to do so. Our society gives us so many choices that we get involved with too many things.

Just writing about this makes me want to quit my job and blow off class work. It makes me want to tear my to-do list into a hundred tiny pieces and run around town throwing the resulting confetti in the air, recruiting other teenage quitters from their workplaces along the way.

We'll spin our regulation uniforms over our heads in a colorful parade and sing "Don't Worry, Be Happy" in unison. This starts at 6 p.m. today. Be ready.

After things settle down we'll all go hang out, and someone will say, "So, what do you want to do now?"

I will gladly respond, "I don't know man, what do you want to do?" and we'll spend the rest of the day staring off into space.

It seems backward that people work hard all their lives to have leisure when they could have immediate leisure simply by being lazy.

I suppose it's the issue of comfort. Leisure on a cold bench isn't quite the same as leisure in your own home, but for some reason I still daydream about being a starving artist, a castaway or a hobo.

Homelessness seems like an easy alternative to making frightening choices and commitments. Facing the life ahead of me, I wish there weren't so many of these important decisions. I appreciate having options, but I would prefer them to be less work-related.

I wish life would stop sloshing all this workohol in front of my face.