Busyness

I've almost finished a basement renovation project: doing the room from top to bottom with new ceiling tiles, fresh wall paint, and laminate flooring to mask the error of asbestos tile. The task has held my focus through Christmas break and nothing else got done. It was a way of keeping distracted in activity. I have a habit of distraction. One of my favorite websites is Duckworks, an online magazine for amateur boat builders. I keep checking it because they are going to be running one of my stories. At least that is the reason I delude myself with. The truth is, I spend far too much time looking over boat building projects in the fantastical hope that I'll build one. I went so far as to buy a set of plans. Why the obsession? Perhaps a childhood dream of having a boat, the romance that comes with a boat. A boat symbolizes freedom, regardless of size. Of the two I built two summers past, neither hold more than two people and each carries freedom in its hold. The lone fisherman in a boat on a lake is different than a fisherman on the bank casting a line from shore. The one on the shore is land-locked, tethered to the earth. The one in the boat embraces the fluidity of freedom and can follow the water course wherever it leads.
Looking over boat plans also keeps me from other work, work avoidance, avoiding what else I could be doing, which includes writing. But writing is also a way of freedom. And I want to be free.