Here’s the page from my Filofax organizer where I scribbled down ideas for future blog posts as they occurred to me on Jim’s and my trip last week to celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary. It may look like a bunch of hieroglyphics to you, but in amongst the greasy-from-sunscreen sections where the pen wouldn’t write are references to Eudora Welty, the importance of memory, and how the people you meet on a trip can make or break the experience. There’s an answer to the burning question: Should you go for the four-hour horseback ride or settle for the two? All this to be addressed in future entries. Be sure to check back for these nuggets!
I’m sort of in the tradition of Harriet Vane here. Once again I have to quote from Gaudy Night, although I wasn’t trying to get away from an unhappy romantic entanglement but was indeed celebrating a happy one (not that I would call marriage an entanglement):
She had left England and travelled slowly about Europe, staying now here, now there, as fancy dictated or a good background presented itself for a story . . . She had gathered material for two full-length novels, the scenes laid respectively in Madrid and Carcassonne, and written a series of short stories dealing with detective adventures in Hitlerite Berlin, and also a number of travel articles . . .
(Parenthetically, how I wish I could read what she wrote! But she’s a fictional character, so she didn’t really write any of those things)
I’m looking forward to sharing these hastily-scrawled ideas with you over the next few weeks. Indeed, I’d have to say that keeping track of them was an added enjoyment to an already-enjoyable trip. It wasn’t at all a matter of feeling obligated to do some work while I was gone. I love writing this blog. And this morning as I checked in on Gretchen Rubin’s blog (another frequently-quoted source), I found her saying this:
One of the aspects of my life that makes me happiest is that I do the same thing for work that I do for play. My “job” is exactly what I do with my free time: reading, writing, taking notes, observing people.
Couldn’t agree more! How about you? Do you find joy in your work?