Do Be Do Be Doooo

Left the office for once today. Got coffee, walked around the block, and sat in the sunshine on an old bus bench. Watched two policemen checking out an apartment, a man playing w/ his son & a woman w/ her dog in the park, and another woman in a red car sit w/ her turn signal on at the edge of the parking lot for 5 min.

I sat looking at that parking lot, which was a fenced-up wasteland for 2 of the 3 years I've been looking down at it out my work window. I reflected on how little I actually leave the building during the day to just sit, although I could easily do so. And I thought about the great urge to DO vs. BE.

I would say that the compulsion to do is greater, but there is a fair amount of guilt about not taking the time to be. Every day, with the vast amount of media at my fingertips, I spend plenty of time thinking about how I should work on this, or craft that, or read those books & articles & tech tips, etc. etc. - all the do urges.

But to be would mean standing back from all this input and making sense of it. Connecting the dots and forming an internal vision of how events/people/histories tie together; or alternately, taking the time to understand something in great depth, research and all. Maybe a class, or maybe just personal, insatiable knowledge, to set an example for my son.

Which leads back to the need to do...and instead, the other night I sat in bed and watched an awful movie on instant Netflix.

One walk outside at a time?