Writing orgy

[Left] This picture doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I enjoy it. Maybe you will too.

At times, I'll just go into ridiculous writing sprees. The fact that I'm working a fairly easy slacker job at a driving range right now helps – I sit around for three or four hours, so unless I want to stare out at the grass, it leaves plenty of time for typing, reading or writing by hand. (Yes, I still do that from time to time.)

In a way, the lack of Internet is a good thing, because it forces me to be productive. I sometimes liken myself to Bill James, the baseball statistics pioneer who worked long hours as a security guard. When I read about that, my mind immediately thought, “So he was like me, and had plenty of down time to just sit around and think about baseball statistics.”

When I'm at the range, I am ridiculously productive, and I'm not sure why. As an example, in the previous three hours, I've typed 2,500 words. Most of these words were for three professional pieces that I'll actually be paid for and that people will actually read considering me a “professional” as they read it. That statistic doesn't include this entry, whose 200 words (as of this sentence) I typed in about five minutes.

However, these sprees lead to tremendous lows, and I'm not entirely sure why. For example, when I'm at home I'll often just stare at the empty Word screen for a minute or two, and then immediately find something else to busy myself with. Sometimes, it is in a productive way, such as playing a video game that I'll review later, moderating and posting at the Adam Carolla Show message board, or catching up on some decent journalism at Slate.com. But often, it's just sloth and wasteful on my part – Replaying Final Fantasy 4 or Earthbound for the 700th time, reading on Wikipedia about the X-Men, picking through Roger Ebert's archive for reviews on films I've already seen.

As I just suggested, these moments make me feel a bit slothful and wasteful, but should they? They sort of provide a subconscious reinforcement of my existing thought pattern and generate thoughts for my “idea bank,” for lack of a better term. If my writing and blog entries are full of random wanderings that people seem to enjoy, should I be trying to curb that rambling instinct in what I do in my “free” time?

... This is a sort of abrupt place to end an entry, since I normally go much longer, but that's the extent of my thoughts on the matter. I suppose I should start typing new. But maybe I'll play a game of Tetris instead. (See what I did there?)