I’ve been puzzling how to spend my time.

Of money I’m careless, though not profligate. Enough is plenty.

But of time I’m miserly, for there is never enough, and my account is dwindling. “Lost time,” wrote frugal Ben Franklin, “is never found again.”

Few predations enrage me like wasted time. Concision beguiles; avaunt, windbags! Bores I switch off or if I cannot, bolt. What is boring? Whatever my soul sniffs at the way Henry sniffs at his kibble. My vision of hell is waiting in an airport for a flight that never boards. Some folks can read or play games there. I can only sulk.

What nourishes my soul? Countless delectables – words, music, nature, romps with those I love – but all require tranquility as a precondition. Frantic, I’m useless. The Nameless One has been the most interesting President of my lifetime as a phenomenon and the most tedious atmospherically. I should sue him for all the masterpieces I failed to create, dumbstruck by his mismanagement.

Most days these days I’m tranquil. But how to spend my treasure most judiciously?

When I’m writing hard, as now, I’m fully deployed, for what more can I disgorge than my all? If my writing’s boring me, I quit aghast for surely I will bore others. But a moment comes after a three- or four-hour sprint when I’m written out, in need of replenishment. By what?

This is my danger zone. I dither, check headlines, emails, the news again. Substack is a swamp of imploring voices, half of them, it seems, congratulating themselves on being “authors,” as if by affixing the label one earns the honor. The most I’ll ever be is an aspiring author (until I’m a dead one).

Twenty books are piled on the table by my work-bed. These are my must-reads – urgent – now! On the carpet are piled another dozen. That’s before I eye our shelves, where thousands bide their time. Poems, stories, essays, memoirs, aphorisms, anthologies… Nothing ill-written! Jane can read prose she does not admire – mysteries, books on interesting topics. Not me. But how can I predict, of all these books, which will excite me most? A poem by Hardy, a story by Cheever, an essay by a stranger in an eminent anthology? How about Shakespeare, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Dr. J? I sob like the fat boy in the sweetshop – why must I choose? – I want them all!

Stalled, self-disgusted, I may blurt my dilemma into my journal. That’s what I’m doing now. Call it the amateur’s lament. Interested in an infinitude, there’s nothing I have to read, so I end up munching what I oughtn’t (more headlines, emails, reader stats…). The news is important but repetitious. I trust the analysts I depend on to steer me right (Krugman, Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich, experts on opinion research, Ukraine, Canada…). But more videos of poor Alex Pretti being slaughtered, more Epstein dreck? I get it, I know what I think, move on!

I waste my time puzzling how to spend it. I rebuke myself with little effect. And now it is almost mealtime, or Henry rightfully insisting on being walked.

My guidance to myself – consistent, wise, stern, and ignored – is BEGIN. Pick up any from those book piles and commence. Force my mind onto a track and hope it chugs. There is no best use of my mind. The condition of modern man, wrote Auden, is “paralysis in the void of infinite opportunity.” “The greatest thing a human soul ever does in the world,” wrote Ruskin, “is to see something, and tell what it saw plainly.”

Yes, in thunder. So BEGIN.