Intelligent selfishness

Is there such a thing as "intelligent selfishness"?

That's a rhetorical question, but only in part. Yesterday (Saturday), I made the decision to work on a frivolous project rather than do most of the things that I should do. As a result, I have enough fabric pieces cut to keep my needle busy for, quite possibly, months. Frivolous stuff, mind you: It's not like I'm sewing clothes for the poor. But this brand of laziness is somehow different than if I had intended to spend the weekend in "virtuous" work, but instead crawled into a book that I've read a dozen times.

"Frivolous" as the weekend was, I still did go to the bank, pick up finch kibbles, attend a two-hour meeting, type and post three-and-a-half pages of meeting notes online, and ship my Dad's birthday/Father's Day present. But it still feels like I've thumbed my nose at adulthood. And y'know what? That feeling is just The Bee's Knees.

Yet all day I've worn a trinket-necklace that my Grandfather brought home from the First World War (as a present for whom, we don't know--he didn't marry my Grandmother until 1929) . The little blue glass dog is usually my talisman against whining, remembering that he walked in the bitterest Minnesota weather to break rock for the pittance that fed his family during the Great Depression. (It is necessity trumping nature that has kept me from sloth in the last decade or so of my life: Such a talisman is a practical matter, not a fond memento. Trust me on this.)

Grandpa died in my first year, Grandma after I started Kindergarten. I didn't have the luxury of knowing them as anything but a child. To this day, I wonder whether they'd be proud of me for things like my schooling and being able to support not only myself, but another person if need be. Or whether they'd be too scandalized by my unrepentant insistence on living on terms much different from what they were raised to believe are the "right" ones. Either way, I think that they understood that living entirely for others--even with the best of intentions--is ultimately counter-productive.

So, as much as this sounds like a self-excusing rationalization, I honestly don't believe that they would begrudge me the day that I confiscated. For the first time in well over a month (nearly two, actually), I don't feel the press of the wall against my back, though none of the things that I'm supposed to be doing have mysteriously vanished.