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One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?

Tom Hodgkinson

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Tom Hodgkinson
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Bookseller
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Newcastle
People
Customs
London
Fast
Aspect
Understood
Example
Gyms
Never
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Life
Gym

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The way to stop feeling guilty is to read stuff - I'm not saying my book, but works by Bertrand Russell or Oscar Wilde, people who weren't losers but who didn't believe in the work ethic, and argued this thing about guilt or wrote philosophy about idleness.
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We have become so obsessed by numbers and by bottom lines that beauty and truth has been knocked aside.
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There is nothing so perfect as pinball and a pint at 11 a.m.
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Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they're over-worked.
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The best thing that can happen to anybody is to be sacked or made redundant because often that's when you think, I don't want to become one of the living dead. I haven't got anything to lose, now I can start to follow my own dreams.
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Embrace the faff. Stare out of the window. Bend paperclips. Stand in the middle of the room trying to remember what you came downstairs for. Pace. Drum your fingertips. Move papers around. Hum. Look at the garden.
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I suddenly realised, hey, I'm not a lazy idiot, I'm an idler! It's something to aspire to, it's part of the creative process! That's fantastic!
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It will soon be difficult to put up a shelf without a degree in shelf putting up.
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My idea of childcare at festivals is to sit at a trestle table with an ale while the kids run around and make up their own games.
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Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.
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Part of this individualism is you feel this pressure that you alone have to conquer the world, and if you don't work all the hours God gives then you start feeling really guilty. If you can stop feeling guilty, then I think it's easier to start doing what you want to do.
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Punk was a protest against work and against boredom. It was a sign of life, a rant, a scream, a rejection of bourgeois morals. But have things improved since then? Arguably, they've got worse.
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Pain will never leave us. Instead of putting energy into destroying pain, we need to put energy into creating pleasure.
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A conclusion I’ve come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it’s really about making work into something that isn’t drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.
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I count it as a certainty that in paradise, everyone naps.
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Although I played a lot of computer games in my 20s, now I have children of my own I hate them with a passion.
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When walking you see things that you miss in a motor car or on the train. You give your mind space to ponder.
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The accusation 'unprofessional' means 'You did not behave like a machine today.
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Idleness allows you to turn a situation from boredom to pleasure.
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If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends.
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