Pre-Storm

Today I woke up and went off to the old homestead to do some gardening. It was a quiet morning, and even the mosquitoes were doped, lazy, static. The flowers did perk up a bit when I watered them, but everything else wasn't up to much. Or mulch.

I got home and did some busy-work. Tinkered at the margins, mapped out stuff that would make my audience less bored tomorrow. Reframed my ideas, read through my writing, played with the weak ashy bits of my discontent.

I had two three four coffees. One had some chocolate in it. Another one had two kinds of ground mixed in. I had work to do, and yet there was nothing to be done.

Tonight, I am off to a dinner that is not of my own choosing, nor my own desiring. But tomorrow will be a better day. Or at least, there will be snakes to fight and crocodiles to wrestle in the mudpit of academia.

Creative Boredom

In 1969, Ursula Le Guin wrote, "When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep." I realise that I've always believed implicitly in this.

What I think is that many of the young people I've met — by 'young', I mean roughly anyone born around 1984 or later — are not good at coping with boredom. They find it hard to detect when action grows unprofitable, are bad at (or disinclined toward) gathering information, and are hopeless at tactical sleeping.

I used to fall into a sleep-like reverie in meetings, a bit like that of Tolkien's Middle-Earth elves. My former boss once asked, "Are you getting enough sleep? You keep falling asleep at my meetings."

I replied, "My brain has learnt to go into sleep mode whenever it's not being stimulated and I can't do anything about it."

Which brings me to Savielly Tartakower (the original Professor X!) and his distinction between tactics and strategy. The man who once said, "It is always better to sacrifice your opponent's men," also said, "Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do."