{"id":1417,"date":"2015-06-09T13:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T20:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1417"},"modified":"2015-06-09T11:32:11","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T18:32:11","slug":"avast-ye-lazy-do-gooder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/09\/avast-ye-lazy-do-gooder\/","title":{"rendered":"Avast, Ye Lazy Do-Gooder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Postaday for June 9th:\u00a0On the Edge<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong>We all have things we need to do to keep an even keel \u2014 blogging, exercising, reading, cooking. What\u2019s yours?<\/em><\/p>\n

Put me on a three master out in the middle of the Atlantic at half-past two in the morning, lightning on the horizon and fifty-foot swells smashing cargo in the hold left and right, and you\u2019ll find me up in the crows\u2019 nest, lashed to the rail and cursing God with every pitch and kick. That wing beneath water belong to no angel, and if she leans out too far she\u2019ll swallow up the next gust, send a shiver up the timber and snap your sheets. Sails turned into sarcophagi but I won\u2019t budge from spot until the mizzen breaks in two and Davy Jone\u2019s lighting candles for another dark party.<\/p>\n

Keeping an even keel is one thing. But usually it\u2019s out of whack before I even know it. I\u2019m no prophylactor, me, but then I\u2019m blessed with a mellow life and have little need for balms and calming teas. I get up, walk into my office, do some work, so some writing, play some games, more work, more writing. Maybe I\u2019ll go for a run. Maybe I\u2019ll watch a cheesy horror movie on the Netflix. I\u2019ll have an apple for a snack, a turkey sandwich for my lunch, and when my wife comes home, help her make something nutritious. I go to sleep and I don\u2019t dream about anything.<\/p>\n

I dread shipwrecks, but I\u2019m never more productive than when crisis is on the rise and I\u2019m forced to be at my best. Combine that with my otherwise laid-back life and you can see why I don\u2019t need to keep my keel even. I like to walk around and take pictures of flowers while listening to podcasts. I like to browse Reddit or play Hearthstone and do Ken-Ken puzzles while I\u2019m waiting for my opponent to take his turn. I\u2019ve been known, now and again, to sit in a shady spot on a hot day and drink beer and eat potato chips and read really excellent novels. These aren\u2019t palliatives; these are life goals.<\/p>\n

My wife\u2019s keel keeper is terrible TV. My brother\u2019s is online slot machines. My dad does woodworking, my mom has her crochet. One guy I know rides his bike everywhere. Another gal I know posts political rants on Facebook. And then there\u2019s marijuana, something I can\u2019t do, even thought it\u2019s legal, because my wife\u2019s a Fed and it\u2019s not legal for her. Are any of these world beaters? Do any of this smack of something deep and utterly human?<\/p>\n

Neither do my past-times. Keeping an even keel, then, is just succumbing to an urge for peace. That\u2019s well and good\u2014 but sometimes I wonder what irony there is in craving peace too much, too hard. Like running hard to go get more oxygen. Shouting at someone for silence. You see my point. We\u2019re all of us vibrating dots in a petri dish, some of us swimming straighter than the others, are keels nice and even, but even the biggest dish is just so big and there\u2019s always an edge to strike and bounce off of. Maybe the wigglers got it right\u2014 they never go anywhere, and never hit a thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Postaday for June 9th:\u00a0On the Edge.\u00a0We all have things we need to do to keep an even keel \u2014 blogging, exercising, reading, cooking. What\u2019s yours? Put me on a three master out in the middle of the Atlantic at half-past two in the morning, lightning on the horizon and fifty-foot swells smashing cargo in the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Avast, Ye Lazy Do-Gooder”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-postaday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-mR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1418,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions\/1418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}