I totally don’t get it but I know it’s just me. 

We get home delivery of The Washington Post and because of that I get surveys, via email, to participate in. This morning I received a survey about adult activity books that the Post is thinking about providing, as a subscription, for a fee.  So – adult activity books to be completed online. 

The survey started off with a poll – one of those ‘how often do you…” and the list included sudoku/word searches, adult coloring, a few others I can’t remember plus crosswords. I wish now I had screenshot the survey – because the choices included online and in-print. I checked off never for online or in print, for every category except crosswords – which I NEVER do online, I always print them.  Maybe because I’m old and will always prefer paper and pen.

I don’t get Sudoku at all. What is the point to it? My husband says it’s a logic puzzle, well there you have it then. My trips down logic lane and anyone else’s trip are going to be wildly different. My trip will involve hops, skips, jumps and many, many off-road excursions. Plus it involves numbers which are no friends of mine unless they are occupying bookkeeping territory. I love columns that balance themselves out. I like 1+1=2. 

The coloring book thing – why? I do actually understand where folks might find it soothing. Me? I find it pointless and tedious. And then what do you do with it when it’s done? I don’t recall having coloring books when I was a kid, maybe in kindergarten? Giving a toddler a coloring book might help with their fine motor skills – stay inside the lines. Maybe I’ve just always been an ‘outside the lines’ person – even as a kid. Who knows.

I’m trying to think of some activity, either mental or physical, that I find soothing and I can’t think of one. That is a disturbing thought. Am I never calm? Am I never at peace? Am I never soothed? 

I do get lost in time – when I’m working on a poem or editing photos or researching some arcane topic or doing a genealogy search or just trying to solve a problem (like yesterday with my husband’s computer) but those are hardly times of calmness – my brain is going a mile a minute even while I may be totally divorced from the here and now. 

I can be laser focused but I can’t be calm and peaceful. It’s a little weird.