Moe Tkacik asks:

Isn't stress and anxiety the source of some motivation? I say this because I completely and utterly lack the ability to get stressed about shit anymore. I am fully relaxed, all the time, and the speed just makes me moreso. And while I definitely find it irritating when other people (Virgos, for instance) get unnecessarily worked up about pointless shit, I am entirely too Zen to try and impose my worldview upon them about it, and really too Zen to do much of anything anymore. If relaxed people ever got stressed out and motivated, maybe our global conflicts would be over tariffs on meditation robe exports and incense dumping legislation, but no. Hysterical fanatics govern everything.

Yeah. I've kind of got to have too much to do in order to do anything. When I have too little to do, I invent problems to solve. During a spare 20 minutes last night when my meatloaf and garlic fries were in the oven, I started worrying about my inability to fix the Flophouse's plumbing if it came to that. Luckily I remembered that I have to write a freelance piece this weekend, file for 5 p.m. today, put up an old friend at the Flophouse this weekend and go on a (since-cancelled) skiing trip. Everything was back to rush of calm like a needle inside of your arm, as the song goes.

I don't actually know what Zen is, and Moe's use of it as a capitalized adjective is unfortunate, but it doesn't sound like I would want any of that shit. The work is what matters, right? And the means to the work, even if they eat at your soul -- that's a cost of doing business, right?