When my daughter was in the early years of primary school, her class was asked what their parents’ hobbies were. My daughter piped up promptly with mine: “Reading, sleeping, and drinking wine.” This disclosure of my deficiencies — among the more well-adapted offerings of cycling, gardening, Pilates practice and marathon-running — got me in the soft nervous centre of my self-worth.
Sleeping, reading and drinking wine are three things I have always felt guilty about. They are emblematic of my chronic tendency to procrastinate, my lax self-regulation, my failure to use time productively. Excluding my contribution to the wine industry, they have no dollar value. They produce nothing of immediate, measurable value. They have no rounded sense of task completion at their end.
