How to Be Idle: A Loafer’s Manifesto was a frustrating book to read. Not because it wasn’t good—it was very good—but because, like How to Do Nothing and The Wander Society, and even Walden and Thoreau’s Journal, it shows me a world I wish I could be a part of but can’t quite attain. Like many, I need a job to earn money; I need money to pay off my debts and my bills; I need to pay these off so I can… live? Like I wrote about last month, one of my big goals this year is to pay off my debt. Once I do, I’ll have an extra $1,000 or so a month that doesn’t have a job in my budget. I hate that this extra money makes me happy, but it does. I wish I could spend my days listening to the sounds of nature and daydreaming, but I’m not quite there yet. I don’t know if I ever will or if I even want to, but I love reading books that show me that it’s a possibility, that maybe just thinking about this escape is enough to get me through the day.