Today I found two pieces in a file marked “unpublished,” so decided to share them here. This first one was written in December of 2025:

My entire life I have been a doer. As a child, most of my games involved setting up little stores or building houses for first my paper dolls, then for Cisette or Jan, the predecessors to Barbie. I arranged every cupboard and closet in our house, to my father’s distress, at least when it came to his bathroom shelves.

When I was a teacher, much of my weekend time involved the grading of essays, with my comments sometimes equaling the wordcount of the essays themselves. I shirked in no task.
But now more than 40 years later, I am sitting in the Tulum airport writing this essay whose topic is meant to be how I have decided for the last ten or so years of my life to stop feeling the need to accomplish and to start relaxing and doing nothing! With this in mind, while waiting for the arrival of our plane, we have come to the end portion of the airport that looks out onto the jungle. A toucan just flew by and two huge raven-like birds have taken residence at the top of a very tall communication tower. I can’t help but draw out my camera to take photos and then Jill calls my attention to the shattered window that overlooks the runway  and returning from the ladies room, I see the reflection of star-shaped overhead lights in the polished stone corridor.

And once again, I am doing–taking photos and editing. So it seems as though my resolution must be delayed for a bit until I am in less-interesting environs.

Then it occurs to me that maybe communicating my life via art or writing or photographs is leisure for me–forcing me to take the time to notice before responding to what I have noticed by sharing it with others. To do nothing, one would need to be in what equals a catatonic state, and I remember once again what I once discovered––that doing nothing is a wasting of life. To “do” is to make use of the gift of time by spending it richly––both doing and sharing what you enjoy most.

And so I put down my computer and reach for my camera, intent on doing nothing  on my own terms, by doing what I want to do and translating it into some means of sharing it. Doing nothing but what I want to do which is just this!!!