Somehow, this weekend felt like someone sucked all the oxygen out of the universe.

I had big plans for the weekend, or at least moderate steps toward the things I’ve been intending to work on for a while. Many of which are things that just don’t take scads of effort or triumphant victories over inertia. And yet… nothing.

The weekend wasn’t a total washout. I saw some friends, played some games, watched an utterly frustrating Academy Awards session. (Tilda Swinton? In that field? The Coen Brothers on parade? Really?) But could I call myself productive? Did I sit down and get done? Nope.

I feel like I’m revisiting the same crossroads I practically inhabit all of the time. Does the Blue Pyramid, generally, as a potentially limitless pool of opportunity and time expenditure, add to or detract from my overall productivity? Would it be good to run a month of no BP as a litmus test for what else I could get done? Do feelings of inadequate productivity generally help or hinder the cause of making me more productive? Is there any way to make a day job compatible with my dreams, even in the short term?

And yet there is a larger inertia in play here, just in this particular weekend and seeming to extend to today. I hope I can shake it, that the fog lifts before I have to show up to a meeting or try to put together a project at the place that pays me. Which reminds me that I’m in record territory, as of just last week… Glide is now my longest-running employer ever. And it hasn’t even been two full years yet, even though it feels like eons. That’s probably telling.

But what is it telling me? And am I listening? And why was I startled, deep down, in the core, last night, to really contemplate for the billionth time how finite and fragile life is? For the first time in memory, it truly scared me. It didn’t hit as a passing observation or a reaffirmation of things I already knew, but it scared me. A new level of feeling that I’m falling short of potential, of where I should be. How would I feel if the writings didn’t get written, the ideas didn’t get expounded, the plan didn’t get laid out simply because I was slogging away at a day job in the meantime? Wouldn’t that be silly?

Storey Clayton: he made silly, shortsighted decisions that assumed there’d always be time.

God, save me from that epitaph.