20150322.0813

I found myself in an interesting position yesterday. I was able to complete the freelance piece on which I had been working (and I found out that, yes, it is being made into a movie, explaining why the text was brought to attention). I also got a couple of other things done along the way, and so I felt comfortable taking a bit of a break. Several hours later, I pulled myself away from the computer game I had used to distract and, honestly, numb myself in an attempt to allow my mind to rest. I regret the experience mightily, and I seem to recall having regretted similar experiences before.

In part, the regret stems from the insufficiently strong work ethic with which my upbringing and the training received in graduate school have equipped me. I should never not be working, after all, since the only value I have in the profession and in the world is in the work I do--or so the thinking goes. That such thoughts plague me does not stop me from stopping work, not only to answer the demands of the body for food and rest and the restroom breaks that eating makes needful, not only to attend to Ms. 8 or the Mrs., but to spend time idly, doing nothing or what amounts to being nothing. But when I do, I usually resume work or go to the night's rest thinking that I ought to have done more, that I ought to have spent my time better than I did.

"Better" here does not mean the kind of "better" I usually see deployed in such phrases. It does not mean "Go out and have fun" or "Live life to the fullest" (not that either of those actually means anything). It means "more productive," making more words that say better things (since I write and teach writing for a living and write to try to find a better living). It means that I ought to be working more than I am, rather than spending my time pointing and clicking blindly to make little gatherings of pixels erase other little gatherings of pixels, and still others grow and flourish according to algorithms I do not have the background or training to puzzle out. Or I should be reading the words that others have written, sifting through them for ideas which I can take up and use to foster yet others in that writing to make a better living previously noted.

In any event, today will be a bit of a break. I leave this afternoon for a two-day trip to sit for two on-campus interviews in two different states. I may, before I go, push out a couple more job applications; there are still a few forms sitting on my desk and staring at me. But it will be good to get in the car and go where I need to go to do what I need to do--and maybe a job offer will come of my doing so. I continue to nurture such hope.