I broke my leg a few weeks ago, tibial plateau fracture due to skateboarding if you want the details, but I have been laid up. I also have fairly major research

I broke my leg a few weeks ago, tibial plateau fracture due to skateboarding if you want the details, but I have been laid up. I also have fairly major research projects underway (yes, you can skateboard and lead multi-million-dollar research projects). I have found that when I first sit down, I dread starting the work. Whether I'm working through an algorithm, a project proposal, a hiring process, reading a paper reviewing a grant application, whatever. But I just sit there, because my knee has made all other options even worse. Give it about 30 seconds, maybe a couple minutes, and I've gotten over the dread and just start doing. That's the only thing left to do. This is the same experience I had as a child, on that long road trip, in the back seat, that far back, rear-facing seat in the Buick station wagon, with the red vinyl seats. On I70, on the way from Omaha to Denver. You're just stuck there. You have to do so something. You start staring out the window, imagining what must be happening in the corn fields, the streams that must be in the veins of trees that occasionally interrupt the fields. The fish in the stream. The dirt at the bottom of the stream. How come that dirt hasn't all been washed away? How does that work? what's this little bit of dirt right here on the floor? It looks like the dirt in my shoe. I wonder if I play with this dirt maybe I'll understand dirt. Dirt. Miles of dirt out here. How much of life is dirt? Ow. There's a rock in this dirt. Is the rock part of the dirt? How much of dirt is just rocks? How small is a rock before it's dirt? What else is in dirt? Dirt. Nothing, not even boredom, can suppress the mind. Not as long as there is dirt.