Another day of headlines that describe people blasting, slamming, firing back, shutting down, lashing out, and tearing into one another—the overheated language of a national fever that has yet to break. I scroll through the aisles of the office supply store, soothed by the racks of folders and binders that promise an organized and efficient life. Someday I will find the notebook that will solve all of my problems.
I spend too much time in the weeds, focusing on immaterial details until I am incapable of decision. Should my titles on this website be bold or regular weight? Should my photographs be 900 or 850 pixels wide? I burn up hours dithering over these questions, a baroque form of procrastination rather than finishing the book I’ve been writing for years. I can fiddle for hours with a single moribund sentence, unable to decide between ‘which’ and ‘that’. Or I scroll through chatter, as if answers exist in the babble and thrum of screens. Why have these mental quirks become hardwired so quickly? Time to blow off the cobwebs, hunt down that miserable little pedant in my head and bury his body in the yard. Get back to covering pages with ink. That’s where the unexpected action happens.
