Now that my foot is fixed I can finally go back into the woods, and I didn’t. Mostly I worked at the picnic table and I sanded. When I wasn’t sanding or writing, emails or otherwise, I was researching and thinking. I believe I’ve finally reached the point of having to say no to new projects.
I’ve been using the cavalcade of new projects and new opportunities to prevent myself from taking one on fully. It’s the fullness of the embrace that determines the success of a project, I think, and I’ve been half-hearted as all get out.
I’ve been pretty serious about this house and this land. The built-in took a great deal of concerted work and concentration. But I am not a furniture maker, nor do I want to be one. I’ll enjoy that thing as long as I can, but it ain’t paying any rent, beautiful as it may be.
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There may be something to be said for the beauty of the adolescence of not fully embracing one thing. But likewise, there’s something very good, something mature and realized about choosing.
It’s possible this is all just a response to the oncoming reality of this child. They’ll be enough of a project to keep several of me busy, and Abby too, and she works a lot harder than I do, and smarter, too. There’s a great pressure to choose now, because choices will be somewhat narrower come fall, I’m expecting.
This is all good, this all feels good.
I believe this all rests rather close to what I find compelling about having children more generally. It’s a choice that results from and furthers the serious, the fully embraced. It is a responsibility, it is the responsibility.
While it’s obvious that many billions of people have taken on this responsbility and not been transformed by it or handled it with much Grace, there’s the hope that this time will be different, that Abby and I will do a good job. To so fully embrace hope feels human in a way that is serious. It is serious in a way that almost nothing I have ever been a part of is serious, and that is good.
I’ve been using the cavalcade of new projects and new opportunities to prevent myself from taking one on fully. It’s the fullness of the embrace that determines the success of a project, I think, and I’ve been half-hearted as all get out.
I’ve been pretty serious about this house and this land. The built-in took a great deal of concerted work and concentration. But I am not a furniture maker, nor do I want to be one. I’ll enjoy that thing as long as I can, but it ain’t paying any rent, beautiful as it may be.
It’s possible this is all just a response to the oncoming reality of this child. They’ll be enough of a project to keep several of me busy, and Abby too, and she works a lot harder than I do, and smarter, too. There’s a great pressure to choose now, because choices will be somewhat narrower come fall, I’m expecting.
This is all good, this all feels good.
Good with a capital G, Virtuous, human.
I believe this all rests rather close to what I find compelling about having children more generally. It’s a choice that results from and furthers the serious, the fully embraced. It is a responsibility, it is the responsibility.
While it’s obvious that many billions of people have taken on this responsbility and not been transformed by it or handled it with much Grace, there’s the hope that this time will be different, that Abby and I will do a good job. To so fully embrace hope feels human in a way that is serious. It is serious in a way that almost nothing I have ever been a part of is serious, and that is good.