Meditating with Flo this morning, diddlers came to mind. If I could learn to love diddlers, I might be close to achieving the spiritual grace and depth I have been seeking for years. I wonder if the Dalai Lama loves diddlers. I do not love diddlers, I have never liked them. The dictionary defines diddlers as cheats and swindlers, or more commonly, as time wasters.

I got a call from a writer this week, he told me his agent told him he needs to have a blog if he wants to sell any books in the digital age. I don’t read blogs, he said, how much time, he frequently, he asked, did I spend writing on mine. Several times a day, I said, sometimes more. He was aghast. He wasn’t going to waste that much time on it, he said. Maybe, he added, he could hire somebody to write on his blog every now and then, to give the appearance he was working on it.  A diddler, I thought, you can’t fake a blog, it is either the real deal or it isn’t.

I know the tone and style of diddlers, I run into them all the time. Lots of people who want to be writers or artists or actors are diddlers. John Updike said writers write, they don’t talk about writing, and creative people create, they don’t take too many workshops, or sit around reading the work of other writers, hoping some of it might sink in. Being creative is work, it takes time and discipline and commitment and some blood and sweat, you really can’t fake it, you just have to do it. I believe almost anyone can do it, we all have great stories inside of us, but there is no getting around the work.

I am approached all of the time by people who want to be writers, but once they understand they will have to work at it, they mostly find other things to do. Someone asked me last week if there was a phone number I could give her to find an agent. No, I said, there isn’t, you have to do what I did, write a lot of things and send them to a lot of people, most of whom will not like them. There is no 800 number for hard and committed work. I have watched my wonderful wife build her life as an artist, day after day, hour after hour, there is hardly a moment she is not working on her art, thinking about what to make, how to sell it, ship it, learn about it. She is not a diddler, I could not love a diddler.

I confess to having issues with diddling, it does make me a bit crazy. This is something I need to get over. People have to choose their own paths, find their own way, it is arrogant to assume I have a better path than theirs. I have learned in life that worthwhile things are usually hard to do, they usually take a lot of hard work and commitment. I have written on my blog almost every day since Memorial Day, 2007, there are more than 14,000 posts and thousands of photographs.

My blog has become the center of my creative life, it has inspired me, saved me, shaped my work life, helped me survive the cataclysmic changes that swept through the creative world – especially publishing – since the Great Recession. It is still growing, it is always changing, and it is big enough now to do some good, for me, for some other people. I will never take it for granted, see it as an interruption from my real work. It is my real work, and I wish for my writer friend that he comes to understand that before it is too late for him.

He is a diddler, alas, and I wish him good luck. As for me, I will work to love diddlers rather than condemn them, they are humans too.