To Procrastinate

John Maeda, of MIT, in his "Simplicity" blog writes of Necessary Procrastination. It is a kinder and gentler approach to my curse than the over a million hits on just the single word. Most of those are "how not to" advice. When I am in this January funk I get into in spite of myself, I go back to the Simplicity blog to the right of this, hunt up March 29th, 2006 and balm the rough edges of my sore wounds of procrastination.

All of my edges are jaggedy at the moment. I am not good company, I am not a good companion, my housekeeping suffers, I suffer, it is a deep, dark, uncomfortable place. I went for my January physical and got put on an ACE Inhibitor for a blood pressure uncontrolled by two other meds. I think the new pill flushes me and I just lay about and read.

My reading isn't very uplifting either. "The Shipping News." I know it is years since it hit the outstanding book lists. Dismal isn't it, for a former librarian to be so slow at getting to the Pulitzer Prize winners. Dismal is the story of Quoyle, a hack who is writing the shipping news for a small Newfoundland town newspaper. I would kind of like to see the movie, surely as dark as the book.

It is kind of a wonder about how Proulx winds "The Ashley Book of Knots" into the chapter beginnings. Once I wrote about Frank Troxell showing us how to tie the hardest knot and I put a photo here to show it. I have had some hits by folks using "the hardest knot" that have found their way into this place. I always wondered why. Now I know. I asked He Who Must Be Obeyed, who was a scout leader long ago, why the Boy Scouts needed to know knots. "They are life-savers," he told me while he was re-stretching our 25 year old carpet.