On the Seventh Day

This is not my seventh day writing a post every day for my blog; it is the one hundredth and sixteenth.

I’m not implying that God is a wimp, or even that he exists, or even that if he exists, he only does so in the minds of men.

Oh dear... pitfalls abound...

What I’m wondering is, what is the nature of rest?

I wonder whether I write a blog every morning as a way to unwind, or to wind up to what I have to do for the day. I wonder if this is my rest. I wonder what is work and what is play, and I wonder whether some things can’t be both.

Lots of writers... lots and lots of them... work a 9-5, 5-day week, 46 weeks of the year, and still find time to write, on the side as it were. Lots of these writers are published. In fact, almost all writers, when they publish their first novels, are busy being wage-slaves somewhere for someone.

Then there are the polymaths among us (if they still exist, because I can only really think of rather old examples) like Jonathan Miller and Peter Ustinov, who seem never to stop, and yet make everything look like the most wonderful kind of play (the messing about sort, not the theatrical sort, obviously).

I remember my nephew when he was a small boy of 8 or 9 saying that he wanted to have a career like his uncle (the husband), and not just a job like his dad. That broke my heart a little bit.

Not very long ago, my niece (who is 30!), without thinking, said that the husband and I don’t work. That broke my heart a little bit, too.

I’ve decided, on this day of rest, that it’s not all about one thing, that I do have the best of both worlds, that what I do is both work and play. 

I’m lucky because my work takes me to places that other people only go to outside of work. So, the next time I moan about how tough it is, you have my permission to remind me that I live the life of Reilly.

Today, I know that I do, and I give thanks for it. 

Now, I’m off for a nap... and I'm going to chalk that up as rest?