{"id":181,"date":"2003-05-26T10:37:52","date_gmt":"2003-05-26T14:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/who_really_has_the_time"},"modified":"2003-05-26T10:37:52","modified_gmt":"2003-05-26T14:37:52","slug":"who_really_has_the_time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2003\/05\/who_really_has_the_time.html","title":{"rendered":"Who Really Has the Time?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do not adjust your monitor. We’re back to our regularly scheduled style sheet. Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, ’cause the Matrix-themed style sheet is going bye-bye…<\/cite> Sorry! Sorry. I can’t help myself. <\/p>\n

Anywaay…<\/p>\n

I just want to say for the record that working on two books at once is not easy. You go in to the office, crank away on manual #1 for eight hours. Then you return home, wolf down some food, and put about three more hours into manual #2.<\/p>\n

Then you sit down and write a smashing journal entry. Or not, as the case may be. <\/p>\n

I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Writing for eleven hours a day is draining, but it sure beats digging ditches for eleven hours a day. Don’t get me wrong, I like exercise and fresh air and all that. It’s just that I still don’t know how to swing a pickaxe or shovel dirt without doing bad things to my back, despite my father’s hours of patient instruction on proper pickaxe-swinging techniques. <\/p>\n

This is why I’m glad I live in the world of today<\/em>, rather than the world of my ancestors. I just don’t think I’d do very well in a world where my survival depends on coaxing potatoes out of the frozen Eastern European soil. Oh, sure — maybe I’d have been lucky and been born a rabbi’s son, in which case I would have spent my youth happily ensconced in shul<\/dfn> with nary a potato to be seen. Also, let’s not forget that if you were the rabbi’s son, the chicks really<\/em> dug you. (“Chava! Have I got a match for you!”) Nice work, if you can get it.<\/p>\n

But more likely than not, I’d be forced to show off my potato-hoeing skills on a regular basis. This makes me very glad that I live in a society that values other skills also. Somehow I think drawing yourself up and proclaiming, “These are not the hands of a field worker! These are the hands of an artiste<\/em>!” just wouldn’t cut it on the shtetl<\/dfn>. It didn’t cut it in my Dad’s backyard, that’s for sure.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we’ll see about being a little more regular about these here journal entries. Coming up next: the real, live, gritty, ripped-from-the-headlines, no-holds-barred story on how I’ve so far narrowly avoided becoming a lawyer. This year, anyway. Lawyering… now there’s another<\/em> profession that wouldn’t have been so helpful on the shtetl<\/dfn>. I mean, I’m sure the marauding troops of the Tsar would have wanted<\/em> to read all those strongly worded briefs and injunctions and whatnot. But hey, when you’re galloping through the village with saber in hand… who really has the time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somehow I think drawing yourself up and proclaiming, “These are not the hands of a field worker! These are the hands of an artiste<\/em>!” just wouldn’t cut it on the shtetl<\/dfn>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}