Earning Sloth

Today began with worry. Insistent committee members in my head - more than sufficient to constitute a quorum - voiced any number of reasons why worry ought to sit at the head of the table. I remonstrated. I swallowed a pill. Before the sun came up, after the coffee was made, clothes were folded and put away, checklists were underlined and all the while, the worry pulsated and grew. What needed to be done would take up more than I had. If it got done, it wouldn’t measure up, and havoc would be wreaked.

All of that may still be true, but the work got done. The draft is in the hopper. The drive is shoveled. The new set of brushes and trowels are tucked away underneath cheap cylinders of acrylic paint. Ross Gay’s Book of Delights at hand, with some intermittent scribbling and circling my toe on the flank of the sleeping dog.