Coming Up for Air

I am a putterer.

According to the dictionary, this means:

1. to busy or occupy oneself in a leisurely, casual, or ineffective manner: to putter in the garden.
2. to move or go in a specified manner with ineffective action or little energy or purpose: to putter about the house on a rainy day.

This isn't really an accurate description for what I do, then. First of all, when I putter in the garden, it's not ineffective. I am tending my plants and helping them grow, getting rid of weeds, plucking off dead blooms. When I putter in my house, it's PURPOSEFUL (in direct contradiction to definition #2). I usually tackle something I've been putting off awhile. Like filing. Or cleaning my desk. Or organizing my research. Or going through my kids' clothes and packing away the summer stuff and taking things to Goodwill and so on.

But, purposeful or not, I adore puttering. I listen to my iPod and decompress by moving from project to project, usually just feeling JOYFUL that I am home, amongst my pets and my kids and my things. Home without some deadline looming oppressively. Home and free to be creative.

Which brings me to this post. I've been working on deadline for a while now, stressing over proposals, working on the story bible for my new top-secret project, and so on. Deadlines until I couldn't see straight. In fact, until my left eye developed a very un-Zen-like nervous twitch.

And finally, I got caught up. And finally, I got to come up for air. To me, coming up for air means getting to putter, to let my mind wander where it wants to, to play with my birds or to brush one of the dogs, to deadhead my flowers and sweep the front steps. And somehow, I am a better writer for days like today.

Anyone else?