Which is why I’m now calling work play. 

As I restructure my work-life (or my play-life?), I’m learning to balance the items on the monetizing my creative output side of the scale and the reason I chose non-traditional parish priest work to begin with side of the scale.

Over lunch I made an observation remotely related to our topic of conversation and V pointed out, “And that is a New York Times Bestseller Idea.” When I balked, she simply said it again, giving some supporting evidence. To which I unhelpfully and sarcastically replied, “Oh yes, in all my free time. I’ll get right on that.”  (Sarcasm, I remind myself, is unexpressed anger and I know that perfectly well.)

But of course, this is the very reason why she helped me reschedule my work-a-day life last week – so I can actually have time to write. And this week blew it all to hell. People died, funerals to plan, and the commute is an hour each way. The planning is on successive days, the funerals are on successive days, and the time I’m left after I do my own grieving and refocus, is not immense. (This isn’t a complaint – it’s a stark look at the logistics of my week. And sometimes it’s just like this – I’m a priest, my work is life and death, and while we can now schedule births, death has long been a defier of schedules.)

So the lingering question is this – what will I shift next week to give myself at least some of the time lost this week? Because I so often deny myself the joy of doing the things I yearn to do – old programming left over from when I didn’t realize it was a moral Good to do the things you love.