A little later than usual – Julian Summerhayes

I don’t normally write at this time of day.

But here we are: another day where not much happened. My work is like that…and it’s beginning to (if it’s not already obvious) get me down.

And when I say down, I don’t mean to suggest a state of ennui or boredom or even mild depression but to question why, absent work, I feel so lost.

And I do:

I was raised to do; to be constantly in motion. Call it a Protestant work ethic or being told that unless I was doing something then I was a lazy boy but either way to sit and do nothing was a sin.

Do I feel sinful?

Yes, I suppose I do.

But not in the sense that I’m betraying a higher power but more in the sense that I’m wasting my life moving the pieces around the chessboard but going nowhere.

That begs the question what I’d like to do?

If only…
I could answer that
Question.

Sure, I can lay down a rhythm of lines that point first this way and that but I’ve no more idea now than when I was 14.

To be useful?

Yes, what does that really mean?

How can I be useful on a planet that’s under siege, under such immense pressure, under the thumb with no way out?

And so I sit and wait — mostly.

I wait until I’m called. Yes, that feels like it. I’m waiting for the heat to rise to the surface and to be pulled out of myself and into something more promising.

Tick, tick, tick.

I’m not holding my breath.