My hiatus of several days from this blog can be explained by the simple and fortuitous fact that I’ve had plenty of work to do with good prospects for more to come. I need to work, not just due to the necessity of income. I do not do well when I don’t have something real to accomplish.
The longer the forced idleness goes on, the more surly my disposition becomes. Restlessness sets in, and with it wandering free-form paranoia. If there is a mishap, an episode of disastrous bad luck and ill fortune that can be imagined, I will imagine it.
Sleep deserts me. At night I lie awake staring at the ceiling, my thoughts swirling down black corridors. I’m perfectly aware of what I’m allowing my mind to do and I do it anyway. I know there are productive tasks I could be finishing, but money or the lack thereof haunts my every waking moment and disturbs my rest.
When I do have work, I find myself getting up long before the crack of dawn to get it done with no prodding from an alarm clock. I’ve learned to make use of those extra couple of hours, now spending my 45 minutes on the exercise bike as an active “coffee” break.
Somewhere along this circuitous path, a strong part of my identity has gotten wrapped up in “going to the office,” even if that office is an easy chair two feet from my bed and going online. In recent weeks my cyber life, thanks to a new Facebook group filled with old friends from the little town where I grew up, has become even more active and satisfying.
I find myself thinking about what’s going on in that plain of my existence as I go about the more mundane chores in this one. When a message comes in from a friend in San Antonio, San Angelo, California, or New Jersey, a path lights up on my mental map and I see a glowing thread connecting me to them.
Most probably some kind and well-educated soul would tell me it’s not healthy to think of the Internet as a place, but when you work there and socialize there, it’s hard not to. I wish I had the device the kids use on the SyFy series “Caprica,” little virtual reality glasses that let them step into their cyber-worlds.
This time around, through an idle period and back again, I realized that with work to do and a virtual community online, I function well in this caregiving existence. Let an aspect of my online life get off kilter, however, and I don’t do well. My life out here becomes clouded and unsettled.
At the same time, I also realized that I always wanted to be a writer and now I am one. I used to need to write to make money — I still do — but I finally am to the place where I need to write for the writing. In the midst of this shifting landscape, I need to work on better self direction and better self talk, but oddly, I’m coming to see my world as larger than it was a couple of weeks ago. And I’ve never even gotten out of my easy chair.