Lazy Days

What's worse: being bored or being busy at something you don't want to do? Are those the only two choices? I hear you asking. I don't know.

On again, off again I've been busy at things I wanted to do. Legal work was fun (hard to believe, right?). Trying to make a tired old company into something new was fun. Even failure was a kind of bitter tonic, a shocking, smelling-salt reminder to pick yourself up and go on. Writing is fun. And it comes with a lifetime supply of that bitter tonic I just mentioned.

Here I am, picking myself up again. Actually, it's a kind of anticipatory pickup. Eyore-like. I wrote an oped piece I like and sent it out. A couple of agents are reading my new novel. In the timeless words of the world's most famous stuffed donkey: "Oh, well, I don't suppose anyone is going to like them anyway."

I need to start a new novel. That's fun. In the same genre as considering a cluttered attic or garage, dreading moving that first ratty cardboard box or rake even as you begin to imagine a glittering new space that will bring pleasure to so many...or at least to you.

I could go play golf. I love golf. The problem is, I can't play it with my dad or my sons. I like playing alone. Sometimes. But that leads nowhere. I'm all about going somewhere. I don't even know why. My DNA won't leave me alone.

I suppose I've answered my own question. Busy is better than boring. Not busy for the sake of being busy (although it sometimes turns out that way), but busy in the hope of getting somewhere I know I want to go, even if I don't know precisely where that is.