The other kind of falling on your face

My daughter started walking a couple of weeks ago. Running and dancing around soon followed, and as a result she’s been burning a lot more energy than she had been before. So every once in a while, she falls flat on her face and lays their contentedly, until she’s got the energy to go again.

“You know,” I thought this morning, “that’s not a bad idea. I should really take a page from her book.” Maybe that sounds a bit silly, but I think you’ll agree that when when you reach a point at which you’re taking life lessons from a baby, you’re probably in need of one.

I realized this weekend that I haven’t really got what you’d call a “hobby” these days. I try to cram a lot into my days, but that’s become a job in itself. I’ve always made it a point to fill my life with creative projects and fun times, but most of these have either become work or been abandoned altogether during the past year and change.

I haven’t got anything on the go right now that doesn’t have any purpose beyond my own contentedness and satisfaction. That’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? I’ve got a lot of personal pursuits, sure, but each of those contributes in some way to my family, my career or my own personal development, and that’s not really the same.

I’m lucky, to be sure, because I’m one of the very few people who’s genuinely “doing what he loves.” The problem is, lately, I’m not doing anything else.

I need something that doesn’t improve me in any specific sense. Something that doesn’t make me a better or healthier person, or help me pay for daycare or save for my kid’s education. Something that doesn’t benefit me or anyone else at all, beyond being fun and making me more at ease and more fun to be around.

If it has any other purpose, it won’t do. If something great were to come out of it, then that would be fine, but it would also have been by accident. The point is to do something that’s mine, for the sake of doing it.

I need to find my “falling on my face.” The good kind, not the kind I’ll end up doing symbolically if I don’t find it. And it obviously won’t be “learn how not to mix metaphors,” because that would have a clear benefit to blog posts like this one.

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