I want to suggest some sort of a community meal, probably a breakfast since I have a friend/client that would likely donate a great deal of pancake mix for this purpose if I asked. I’ve only suggested it to two close friends at church and they made no comment, instead responding only to the dinner invitation I made in that same text.

As Abby pointed out none of us have any time at all. We are all totally overwhelmed and the idea of adding on another weekly or monthly thing, of sacrificing a Saturday to this instead of to chores and projects? It seems silly bordering on the irresponsible.

Jack and I also spoke about doing some sort of ecumenical (that means representing a number of different churches) men’s group. And while he liked the idea he felt that it was very common amongst his parish to find men with very little free time. Everyone is tired, everyone is exhausted, everyone is stretched and brittle and has no room whatever for some sort of silly men’s group.

I don’t exactly feel like I’m swimming in free time. I think if I didn’t write this blog and someone suggested I do, I’d think them insane. But somehow I write it with real consistency. I miss a day here or there, maybe once a month, but for two years now it has gotten done. And that’s every day.

I suppose fifteen or twenty minutes a day is only about two hours a week whereas this meal I’m suggesting would be the better part of an entire day. Done once a month, assuming the breakfast takes six hours, it actually works out to be about the same time commitment as this blog.

Which is not negligible, but also not that bad.

Of course I’d have to drive to church and back, and of course Abby works on Saturdays, but she could drop me off early with Roby and Roby could play in the play room while we prepare things, she could even help. Then Abby’d be out of work and it’d be the early afternoon and it’d be tempting to just stay until Vespers, but that’s at five. It could become a day pretty quickly is what I’m getting at.

Anyways I think if you worry about some new responsibility like a pancake breakfast it seems larger than it is. If you schedule one and advertise it for February the whatevereth at ten AM, well, it’s happening then and you had better make room for it in your life, hadn’t you? And at least in my experience, I almost always do.

I practically never fail at something for want of time or skill or bandwidth. It is almost uniformly my having forgotten, which is a fault of systems, and honestly, something that happens when I don’t have enough going on.

While incredibly busy I write things down and swim around in my own worried obsession with how much is going on, touching each task like a sculpture in a memory palace.

I should do the pancake breakfast, is what I’m getting at.