Jon Takes A Break?

Jon called me from the road. “Sue told me I look tired, she said I’m doing too much and need to take a break. I told her you’ve been saying the same thing and she said it’s because you and she are sisters”.

Jon was talking about Sue Silverstein from the Bishop Maginn School where Jon has been raising money and teaching a writing class.

“So, I said, What are you going to do about it?”

Jon was on his way back from dropping off his computer to be repaired in Bennington Vermont.  No computer, people he trusts telling him he needs to take a break, it seemed to me like the forces of the universe were hitting Jon over the head with the idea of taking some time off.

I take Saturdays off from working in my studio and being online.  Jon never takes a day off.  Writing comes to him organically.  He moves into it effortlessly throughout the day.  Everyday.

“But what will I do if I take time off?” he asked me, kind of nervously.

Read, sleep, walk, those are the things I like to fill my time with when I’m not working.  Add watching a British Mystery or two and I think this would work for Jon too.

But he can figure that out on his own.

Last night when I got home from Bellydancing, I looked in his office and saw him hunched over my small laptop, the absence of his giant computer screen that dominates the desk and room creating a disconcerting void.

Things seem right in my world when I glance into Jon’s office and see him at his desk writing.  So I can understand how unnerving it must be to him not to have his computer waiting for him, like a loyal dog.

But Jon did eventually agree to take some time off.  I, like my “sister” Sue, think it will do him good.  But even though he says he’s going to do it, I won’t believe it till I see it.