May 3, 2025

Windows shut against the cold. Cicadas leaving their shells on vegetation. Worked on poems in the morning. Because I’m used to my life, I don’t notice what anxiety shrouds the concept “free time” for me. I don’t recognize free time. I don’t allow myself free time. Even my leisure is purposeful– not sunbathing and barbecues, but museums and cathedrals. This is not thought through, but reflexive. If I’m not writing or painting or gardening or sending out manuscripts, I feel that I’m doing nothing at all. I read maybe three books a year for pleasure, because that is too much like doing nothing. When I lived with Eddie he complained that I never just sat on the sofa and watched TV with him. I recognized he was correct, but also that I could not do otherwise without maximum commitment. Today, for instance, the morning was OK because I wrote and revised and entered contests. But I did nothing in the afternoon, and caught myself lamenting a wasted day. The fact that there was nothing in particular needing to be done should have been taken into consideration. The cream of the jest is that all hours and years of application came pretty much to nothing.