I'm not very good at relaxing.
In that total, unadulterated, undisturbed, complete and total sense of the concept, I confess to being somewhat of a failure.
I don't say that as a martyr or as one critical of others able to just completely let go and unwind. I admire those people. You don't need to be Bikram to know and appreciate the benefits of unplugging, recharging and re-energizing. And not just the laptop batteries. Whole publications are devoted not only to convincing people of the merits of downtime but also teaching them how to do it. It's probably a said statement a publishing arm exists dedicated to and finding a sustainable market for teaching people how not to do anything.
But I'm a writer.
So what, one might be inclined to say. Writers aren't necessarily such hard workers (with apologies to those fellow scribes who are). I've heard writers described as actors who are too lazy to wait tables.
I'm the kind of writer, I suspect like many of my brethren and sistern, that makes the majority of my income from sources other than writing. Thus (writers like to say things like 'thus', even when we're speaking), the bulk of the writing occurs during the down time from generating other sources of income, which conflicts with the relaxation time.
Take right now.
I am sitting around a swimming pool at a resort, being served drinks, watching other people relax, and about all I can think is the writing I'm not doing while I'm sitting here reading Stieg Larsson's admittedly very good book in a genre in which I'm supposed to be writing.
There are others like me.
Looking around the pool deck I count three people pecking away at laptops. They may not be fellow writers (they may be, though - look how many people James Patterson has writing for him) but they're working. What's a guy to do?
Unable to take it any longer, the reminders all around me, (I think I even saw the guy next to me check his email on his Kindle when he was supposed to be relaxing) I started to write. On my Blackberry, on which this entire posting was composed.
At poolside. Drink beside me. Relaxing.
