It's just another day at the office, quite literally in this case. Sometimes, like right about now, it seems that I don't really want to be here. Not that there's anything wrong with here, but I suppose everyone has days when their body is one place and their heart or mind is in another.

It's been a long-running problem for me in life. While I was still in elementary school, I can remember the teacher complaining that I spent as much time daydreaming and looking out the window as I did paying attention to the lessons.

If I were a student today, someone likely would be trying to dose me with energy-altering medication.

I can still remember sitting in a classroom overlooking a ball field as the children and adults on the streets below moved about in their own little drama (or comedy, at times). Little did they know that I was recording the moment of their life in the movie reels of my mind. Besides, people doing nearly anything were much more interesting to watch than a dusty chalkboard covered with lessons in mathematics or spelling.

Adding to my work time malaise is the fact that I'm also feeling pretty tired this week—mentally and physically to some extent. I've been busy each and every night since Sunday without a single free evening. Most nights I've been coming in at near 10 p.m. and heading in to bed within an hour or two, but my internal clock and my schedule require that I arise soon after the sun. Sometimes the early morning is the only time my house is really quiet, so I relish my ‘coffee time.'

With the weather warm and the skies nearly cloudless, these days I watch the world go by through the slats of the blinds in my office as the sun saunters across the sky in its daily stroll.

Sadly, I know that it will be on its way back down before my time will once again be my own.

Saturday I finally got back to work on my building. It had been almost two weeks since I had even lifted a finger to work on my mammoth project, which may actually have gone the way of the real mammoth if I hadn't gotten back to it.

I finally managed to get the rest of the extended roof stripped up with pieces of wood and part of the metal in place, which took all day and into the evening Saturday. It remains my goal to try and get everything finished as soon as humanly possible, but I'm developing a newfound realistic bent. I expect to have it all roughed in by the end of this month, while the interior of the thing may not beat the cold weather.

So long as I can rig up some lights, that'll just give me something to do this winter.

I'm not complaining that I have plenty on my schedule, but sometimes the days go by so quickly that they themselves seem little more than a daydream. For the past week or so, I have been feeling a little tired. With things going on both day and night, it's hard to find time to rest and relax. I sometimes spend my restful time with my family and sometimes alone, but the peacefulness that comes from having nothing required of one cannot be replicated by any number of appointments. Sometimes those peaceful times are spent working on one of my many projects. Just being able to spend some time with my thoughts (or just free of troubling thoughts), helps me feel rested. It's the hustle and bustle of life, of dealing with people, of maintaining relationships and decorum, that eventually wear me down worse than any amount of physical labor.

I've always wanted to be able to leave the ‘regular' working world and spend my time in some sort of a free-willed excursion traveling through life on a whim and a prayer.

The main reason I haven't done so is the fact that I really feel connected with what I do for a living. My work is a part of who I am and being able to write things, help people and share information that is important is something I'm really honored to be able to do.

Think about it: How many people do you know who can make a living wiggling their fingers?

But with life comes responsibilities, and with each responsibility comes the anchor chain of duty. I spend much of my time tied to a set of keys that I carry in my pocket. You can always tell how many ‘anchors' a man has by how many keys he must carry. I realize that all of the chains attached to my heretofore free vessel were placed there of my own volition. While some people like myself might groan about the burden of these chains, I am the first to rush to gather more at each opportunity. It is the weight of these responsibilities that keep me upright, in my place and where I need to be. In times of difficulty, it's nice to have the security of our anchors to hold us in place, so that we don't drift and become lost. But there is a part of every person that longs to sail away into the horizon, if only to see what lies just out of sight in the distance.

I sometimes am able to mentally do that with just a few days off work and away from the responsibilities of life. It doesn't really require going anywhere in the body. But I've spent a good deal of time physically traveling in the past as well and I can honestly say that

I was always glad to get back to my native soil, to the place where my roots have grown accustomed to drawing their nutrition. Traveling in that way is actually more tiresome in some ways.

As for malaise, perhaps it's little more than a symptom of a restless spirit yearning to be free from the constraints of the world around it. Or it could be that I stayed up too late and got up too early for the past seven or eight days and I am in need of some recuperative rest. Either way, I'm sure that this mood will pass like so many others, with little left to remind me other than a few typewritten words in a dusty copy of the newspaper stored in a closet somewhere.

Now there's a bright and happy thought. \

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