Brandon: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Just piddlin’.”
That’s become our running conversation lately. Same question. Same answer. Over and over again.
And the truth is—I don’t fully know what’s behind it.
Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s burnout. Maybe it’s something deeper that I haven’t quite put words to yet. But for the past few months, my motivation hasn’t just dipped—it’s disappeared. And when the noise dies down, when nobody needs anything and nowhere is calling my name, I don’t rise to meet the quiet.
I collapse into it.
Now to be fair, it’s been a season.
Ever since Elon Musk hit that retweet button and my name started bouncing around in newspapers I never expected to be in, life has felt like it’s been stuck on fast-forward. The kind where you don’t quite catch your breath before the next thing hits.
Brandon’s been sick—first that long, drawn-out sinus infection, and then Bell’s Palsy right on its heels. Belle’s wrapping up her senior year of homeschool, standing on that edge between childhood and whatever comes next. I’ve been on the road with the podcast, stepping up to podiums to speak, and somewhere in the middle of all that, trying to build something real and lasting on YouTube.
So no—I haven’t been sitting still.
But the minute all that motion pauses, something in me powers down too.
And for days—sometimes weeks—I drift through the house like a ghost. Not sad. Just… absent. I’ll pick things up, put them down, start something small, wander off before it’s finished. Scroll a little too long. Fall into a rabbit hole I didn’t mean to find.
Piddlin’.
That’s what my Mamaw always called it. And the older I get, the more I realize she had a word for just about everything that mattered.
I got curious the other day and looked it up. The word goes all the way back to the 1540s. Means “to spend time on unimportant things… to work in a trifling way.”
And I thought—well, if that ain’t me lately.
Not useless. Not lazy. Just… untethered. Moving, but not really going anywhere.
Still, I’ve noticed something shifting.
Spring has a way of doing that around here. You can feel it before you can explain it. The air softens. The light stretches itself a little longer in the evenings. And if you’re paying attention, something in you starts to wake up with it.
These past few days, I’ve found my way back to the page. I’ve made lists. Cleared off spaces that had gotten cluttered. Finished things that had been sitting half-done for too long.
It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic.
But it’s movement.
And maybe that’s the thing I’m starting to understand—piddlin’ isn’t always the problem. Sometimes it’s the pause. The in-between. The quiet stretch where your mind is sorting through everything it’s been carrying.
A little trifling time before things come back into focus.
And now, with the azaleas starting to bloom and the days finally stretching out again, I can feel that shift taking hold.
I think I’m about ready to trade in the piddlin’ for something with a little more purpose.
Not rushed. Not forced.
Just… forward.
