Spread Thin

Bilbo: I’m old, Gandalf. I know I don’t look it, but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel… thin. Sort of stretched, like… butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don’t expect I shall return. In fact I mean not to.

Now before you get all worried, this isn’t a post to say that I’m not going to blog anymore. No–I enjoy enlightening you all far too much for me to give it up. Really, this isn’t a post to say I’m going to stop doing anything in the future. I’m going to continue doing everything that I’ve been doing. I just might not be able to do every everything as much as I was doing it.

The problem is that I feel like I’m getting stretched. And not stretched in a positive, taffy-like experience. Stretched as in silly putty drawn too far. Stretched like a guitar string tuned too high. Stretched like a Caramello commercial right after they say “cut!” Between work, writing, blogging, family, church, church callings, movies, exercise, goals . . . I find myself getting grumpier at times than I have any right to be.

So what’s the solution? Well, the obvious one is to give things up, but what? The easy decision would be to give up the “fun” stuff–leaving room for me to get more business done. But you know what? I do all the business stuff so that I can do the fun stuff, not the other way around. I have no desire to sacrifice pleasure so that I can have more pain. But at the same time, there’s not a whole lot of pain I can give up, either. Work is busy right now. There’s no way around that–not if I want to keep my job.

In the end, I suppose this post is nothing more than a long whine. A “poor me” statement. Aren’t you glad you read it?

Well, since you made it this far, I’ll add two other things. The first: it was 27 below 0 this morning at my house. Yeah. That’s cold. The second: if you aren’t on Facebook yet, this is an excellent explanation of why you ought to be, you troglodytic Luddite. 🙂