A few days ago, I found myself spending the afternoon in bed with one of my favorite Norton Anthologies. I wasn't feeling that great, and I had even gotten a lot done earlier that day, but I still managed find a way to start feeling guilty about it. 

As I flipped through the pages and soaked in the afternoon sunlight, streaming in from the window across that recently laundered white bed spread that I love so much, a question came to the surface of my mind and made me feel badly. 

Is this really my life?

The truth is that sometimes I feel like I should be doing more.

I work six days a week, for only four or five and a half hours at a time. This means that sometimes, I think I'm working a lot more than I really am. When I finish up my day and come home at noon, it often seems like I deserve a break. Even if I don't.

But sometimes, I'll go running. Sometimes I clean the apartment. Sometimes I spend hours in front of the computer, getting important work done. And yet, sometimes you can find me sitting comfortably in bed in the middle of an afternoon with a book in my lap and my worn old teddy bear in the crook of my arm. And guilt sometimes seems like a waste of energy.

Because, those moments spent alone with good reading? William Carlos Williams may have been talking about plums, but he was right when he wrote, "Forgive me, they were delicious." And I don't think he was really that sorry. Neither am I.

Yes, this is really my life.