Perfectly Useless

While I was looking at my upcoming calendar for the next couple of months today I became, somewhat inexplicably, both excited, and incredibly depressed. Weekends and evenings are filling up, and filling up with all sorts of wondrous and good things – writers group meetings (with two different groups) and writing seminars, gaming events (Dungeons & Dragons®, Magic the Gathering™, and a four-day trip to Las Vegas ♠), group parties and individual meet-ups for drinks and dinner, with friends both old and new, even a science fiction convention tentatively penciled in (Boskone - anyone else going?).

So the excited makes sense. But why the depressed?

Maybe it's my Lutheran upbringing. Too much fun is bad for you, and you certainly haven't earned it. Heck, why aren't you working a second job, if you have all that free time? Or maybe it's the fact that last year's heart attack brought home, in the biggest of ways, the fact that time is truly the only priceless commodity, and every hour spent doing any one thing is an hour that can't be spent doing something else. Like writing, say. Maybe blogging more often. Or reading, which could also include reading any of the three books purchased yesterday, or the two books bought today, in unsuccessful attempts to treat my mood with a little retail therapy.

Whatever it was, I'm getting over it now. My saving mantra? Life is indeed precious. In fact, it's too precious NOT to spend time doing things you enjoy, with people you love.

I'm still writing, in any case. Squeezing it in here and there. And that's painful hard work, that also happens to be immensely satisfying at the same time. Like much of life, I guess. But give up that nothing-but-fun stuff? Sorry, all you Lutheran Pastors that I forget the names of.

It's not gonna happen. Call me a sybarite if you must, and I'll pin that label proudly to my toga, while the buxom serving wench peels me another grape.

A wise man named Lin Yutang once wrote, "If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live." And damn if Lin Yutang didn't happen to write 14 books in Chinese and over 30 books in English while in the process of living.

I haven't perfected living in a perfectly useless manner yet, but I'm going to get right on that. I'm penciling it in for Wednesday, between going to the gym and trivia night.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen