by Jeff Burt
After yesterday’s storm, the first of winter, today is a day for putzing around, an activity that can be done year-round, but especially practiced in winter.
Putzing around is not noticeable. Indeed, most observers will say that you did absolutely nothing while putzing around. That is not entirely true. Putzing around does require one to do things. You can’t classify those things as chores, or repairs, or duties, or fun, or even activities. However, they do mandate an effort, and they do bring a joy, these putzing around things.
For instance, today I wiped down my boots. I did not clean my boots. On close inspection, the laces have grunge near the eyelets, the eyelets have grunge, and the inside soles probably have a couple of years of skin cells and cotton filament balls that look like those found underneath a spider web that hold a fully encompassed husk of an insect. But to the casual observer, from the distance of five feet over the boots, the boots almost glare with that rubbery shine.
I cleaned out the unfiled papers in the file folders in the filing cabinet and piled them near the shredder. Mind you, I did not shred any paper. That will be for another cold day this winter. I just putzed around and removed the papers from the cabinet. It’s the type of activity that your mate asks what you are doing, you say what you are doing, and the mate does not know whether to say thank you or that is unimportant so he or she just says “huh.” That’s putzing around.
I sharpened pencils, but I didn’t use them.
I gathered old photos with the intent to digitize them, but spent hours looking, laughing, and occasionally wondering who the people in the photos were.
Outside, I cleaned the bark off large boles of wood, and I prepared to chop, but my intention wandered, and I lost time while my fingers traced the dull axe gleaming in the sunshine, and like a cat chased the brilliant reflection on the siding to our house.
I examined the garden, could have turned the soil, but thought looking at the seed catalogues a better use of time, even if my fingers fumble turning the pages which seem to be annealed to one another that a twist of thumb and index cannot separate. I sit perusing the same page until the offered cherry tomatoes ripen in my imagination and I stir a few minutes later thinking I have tasted them.
Another good example of putzing around is when I get that drawer out of my desk or chest of drawers that has all of those saved things. You know, those saved screws or wall mounting hardware kits from 2001, a 24-cent remaining Visa gift card, one shoelace, 4 keys that I’m pretty sure don’t match any locks I have, a few dimes and pennies, a light bulb for the refrigerator that’s burned out so I know what to get at the hardware store. Stuff like that. Stuff you can’t throw away because it still has potential value, potential meaning none at the present.
Putzing around means mentally cataloguing all those saved things, maybe even writing the items down on a list, said list being put, where else, in the same drawer. When my mate asks if I found anything interesting, I can answer yes, but if she asks did I find anything useful, I say maybe.
Putzing around should not be confused with tinkering around. Tinkering around is what a person does in a garage or a workshop or a shed. Tinkering is not quite as holy as invention, but it is intentional, and therefore on a much higher plane of activity, albeit intellectual, than putzing around. Tinkering includes making, manufacturing, using a rust remover, tacks, sandpaper, paint, or anything with wires. Edison was a prolific and purposed inventor, but in his heart a tinkerer.
And putzing around should not be confused with being lazy. Being lazy means going around a couple of boxes that need to go into storage, where a putzy person would move the boxes over to clear a wider path. Being lazy means sitting on the couch watching television. Putzing means sitting on the couch looking out the window at the first storm and planning for spring.
Today the branches and leaves have fallen heavily from the wind. I size up how much effort and how many piles it will take to collect those branches and leaves, not disturbing them, noticing how beautiful they appear on the ground, and how long that beauty will last.
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photo credit: Zero Take, Unsplash
Jeff Burt began aging while sloughing through dairy fields for fun and exploration in spring in Wisconsin, leaning to slip sideways to go forward. He learned the importance of storytelling from farmers and hands at the grist mill he inhabited in summers as a method to tell a moral, a joke, or a deserving slice of life. He has contributed to many journals, including Heartwood, Kestrel, Williwaw Journal, and Red Wolf Journal. You can read more about him at https://www.jeff-burt.com.