So I came back from Manchester with mixed feelings about work, idleness, busyness, action and inaction. In the play I saw on Wednesday night, all of the main characters have been doing nothing all summer, sucked into the idleness of the professor's wife, not taking care of the estate which supports them all. Meanwhile the professor also seems to be not writing, but talking a lot about it. That's what blogging can descend into sometimes, writing about not writing, or barely writing. He exhorts everyone else (the whole household is depressed) to "Do something! Dooo something!"
I've been one of the "dead-alive hackneyed people" that Robert Louis Stevenson talks about in the photo above. And I agree that "a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity" (which I also consider a good thing) but then I do also hear the voice that asks "What have you done? What are you doing with your life? Is this it?"
Some of the things I do show up here. Others don't. Some will be written about sometime in the future, I will continue to cannibalise my experience for the reader's pleasure and my own enlightenment. And I will also enjoy my garden, the walks by the river, the light as it changes on my back wall, nights cuddling in front of the telly having filled up on roasted vegetables and hot cups of tea.
I will balance action and inaction and not beat myself if I find I've fallen too far to one side or the other.
