I don't care about the uselessness of what I do

I am amazed, and sometimes even envious, of people who are single-minded in their approach to life. There might be that one thing which is their thing, which they know and do well, and they care not to spend time on anything else or even know about anything else.

I am very much unlike them.

If only I knew how to confine myself within some narrow walls, is what I think every once in a while. Quickly those thoughts vaporize, thankfully.

Which is why, as informative and a great reading experience as Wendy Doniger's The Hindus is, I had to take a break from it and look around at the rest of the world.

Not only look at the world, but also blog about it!

Not that the blogging about all things wonderful (and not) about this world yields any tangible and positive results.

source

The world being such a fascinating place, there is no shortage of topics to blog about.  But, I can see that sometime in the future, I will, for certain, feel like how Philip Roth explains his retirement from writing:

Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-­preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life. It was also my good luck that happiness didn’t matter to me and I had no compassion for myself. Though why such a task should have fallen to me I have no idea. Maybe writing protected me against even worse menace.
Now? Now I am a bird sprung from a cage instead of (to reverse Kafka’s famous conundrum) a bird in search of a cage. The horror of being caged has lost its thrill. It is now truly a great relief, something close to a sublime experience, to have nothing more to worry about than death.

Yes, keeps me out of trouble, as I like to say.  Though, there are times when I wonder if I my identity is so wrapped up with such a behavior that not engaging in what I do will then be a cause for a complete breakdown. Thankfully, those thoughts also quickly vanish.

I am stuck with reading, and thinking, and commenting, for a long, long, long time to come, I hope.  What a wonderful problem to have!