Stalling...

I'm supposed to be writing an article explaining the Swiss vote back in September over reforms to asylum laws and laws concerning foreign nationals in Switzerland, but for the past week every time I sat down to do something I just couldn't bring myself to work. (See, for example, just how much I got done on Friday when Small Boy was at The Farm.) My mind wanders and I surf the internets or, better yet, just hide somewhere and read. I just cannot bring myself to write a serious yet relatively simple article about Swiss politics.

I used to be able to keep six balls in the air at the same time, in college, especially, but even for many years after that. In college I was a student-athlete pulling almost straight-A's and participating in activities other than my sport as well; when I first started graduate school I attended full time while still holding down a full time job at a law firm; once I became a teaching fellow I still always had some paid research gig on the side in addition to my own work. These days, I don't know; I can't string two coherent thoughts together but more to the point I find that I don't care. I don't want to work that hard anymore. It's tiring, and I can't say in the long run that it got me anywhere exceptional, and in the face of the truly limited free time I have, given a choice between something that resembles work and something that resembles leisure, the leisure will always win. I feel as though I am rolling slowly downhill, and the farther away from that efficient person I once was I travel, the harder it is to find my way back to her.

And here's a conundrum: am I lost now, or was I lost then?