feldman

"The forms of kanly have been obeyed!" --Dune

There's a formal precision to the old school work ethic: work, then leisure. You do your homework, then you go outside to play. This has never worked for me. No matter how hard I have tried to shift gears in the approved manner, my brain doesn't have that kind of transmission. Work and play must be mixed for me, if only by proximity of space and time, if not also by content.

In school I always brought a book to read, and wrote correspondence to classmates. This was before phones and text, when we passed letters written on notebook paper between hours and across desks. I also did my homework during other classes (when I bothered), and rarely took school books home.

Home was for writing, hot typewriter humming on my lap through the evenings and all summer long.

Then I found my way into the cube mines, like a pebble rolling into the storm drain, and now I spend the workweek producing little that is tangible or creative (much like school)--with liberal access to a pipeline that's like a Wonka jawbreaker of staring out at the squirrels, writing notes to friends, reading a fuckton of books and having a self-cooling typewriter on my lap all at once.

So the concept of "work, then leisure" is not only antithetical to how I am wired, it's also damned ridiculous in context. I do a great deal better when I remember this, when I throw out the idea of every task in it's box of time, and simply produce. When I open the throttle and do what I've always done: read, write, work, daydream, solve.

Open 'er up.