RECAFFEINATED MONDAYS: But, is my heart really in it?

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:21

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I’m coming off of a decent weekend. Saturday I actually got some yard work done. Well, at least I trimmed the roses. And the older son and I did some work sorting through his stuff in the garage. Then we took a trip to the landfill.

But I’ve also been working on projects, including the writing that I’m doing here and should be doing elsewhere.

I mentioned last week that I was doing a m?ini course with Steven Pressfield. I finished that up on Saturday. I do need to re-read his books that I own, and perhaps pick up a few more. But for this course, this is what stood out to me.

Put your ass where your heart wants to be.

In other words, I’m a writer, so my backside should be in the chair in front of the keyboard.

I was reminded of a quote that my high school creative writing teacher had on her bulletin board.

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

That quote or a variation thereof has been attributed to a lot of people, but the best sources seem to point to Mary Heaton Vorse who gave that advice to young and impressionable Sinclair Lewis in 1911. By the way, Lewis was born on this day in 1885.

Works for me.

As does applying the backside to the chair.

One of my challenges these days, or perhaps an excuse, is having the space I need to spread out and create. I’ve been teleworking for the past 47 years of the pandemic, or maybe it’s just 23 or so months. But that means that I have to have my work laptop and associate files and paraphernalia on my desk. I put it away on weekends and it feels like I can breath at my smaller desk where I make notes and manage my calendar.

I realize how obnoxious and first-worldy it sounds that I have more than one desk to work at. At the same time, I worked hard to get it this way.

But as long as I’m still teleworking, I feel a little cramped with the work laptop.

And I don’t know when I’ll head back to the office. The date keeps changing.

It’s like that scene in Airplane when the arrival gate keeps changing. If you know you know.

Regardless of how many desks I do or do not have, or whether I’m working in a coffee shop or somewhere else, it’s about parking my behind in front of the keyboard.

And yeah, it’s putting my behind where I want to be.

In my defense, my behind spent a lot of time in doctors offices last year. Literally. I can’t really say that my heart was in it.

It did occur to me over the weekend, however, that there has to be a reason behind, so to speak, why I’ve survived cancer of the nether regions twice.

I haven’t quite figured out what that reason is. But when I do, I’ll probably write about it.

As long as I can keep my @$$in the chair.

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THINGS YOU SHOULD READ

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BORN ON THIS DAY

1478 – Thomas More, English lawyer and politician, Lord Chancellor of England (d. 1535)

1804 – John Deere, American blacksmith and businessman, founded Deere & Company (d. 1886)

1812 – Charles Dickens, English novelist and critic (d. 1870)

1867 – Laura Ingalls Wilder, American author (d. 1957)

1885 – Sinclair Lewis, American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1951)

1962 – Garth Brooks, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

WHAT I’M READING

 

BENEDICTION

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Ephesians 3:20–21