“Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. ”

This appealed to me from The ‘Busy” Trap in the New York Times because… well, I have been so busy!  But wait, I don’t mean that as “a boast disguised as a complaint” as author Tim Kreider suggests.   It has been reality (work, kids, blah, blah!).   Actually I aspire to the “idleness” Kreider describes that is his life.   He says it is possible by choosing time over money.

How smart.  Perhaps, if idleness became the new status symbol (“sure I’d love to get together!”), then we’d all be a lot happier.

“The ideal recession desk would be one that makes you feel successful and abundant when you sit at it, without costing so much that you feel foolish for having spent the money.”

That’s the well-spoken advice of Reiko Gomez, a feng shui–oriented interior designer who has refocused her practice on recession-proofing the home, in a New York Times article titled In Search of the Just-Right Desk. The article points out that the American desk is more important than ever – needing to function as a command center for job searches, freelance work and plain old surfing.

I think your space expresses your approach to work. It sets the mood for creativity. Mine includes red coral, red file folders, a giant diamond-shaped paper weight – hopefully all sparking my energy to finish two books this year!

There’s still a few more days of summer to grab and book and settle in your beach chair for an afternoon read. However, in the New York Times Newly Released, it lists books released this month that are far from breezy.

“Everybody suffers, but Americans have the peculiar delusion that they’re exempt from suffering.”

This is Peter Trachtenberg’s introduction to The Book of Calamities: Five Questions about Suffering and Its Meaning. If this sounds a bit too heavy for a summer read, the Times recommends the more hopeful expatriate fiction This Must Be the Place by Anna Winger. Do the weight of the subjects you read follow the thermometer and vacations?

“A lifelong lover of books, Ms. Goodyear lost her sight about four years ago, but in its place has acquired a roster of readers who stop by regularly, bringing with them dogs, gifts from their international travels and offerings of dark chocolate, the elixir she has savored daily since she was 3.”

Elizabeth Goodyear just celebrated her 101st birthday. She is a lover of books and has friends who visit her regularly to read to her, including books by her favorite novelist Rumor Godden. A popular New York Times article titled In Strangers, Centenarian Finds Literary Lifeline profiles this lady who exclaims she didn’t think much would be happening at her age but is happy to have daily visitors. Goodyear’s one-bedroom apartment sounds like a lively place; as she says “usually there’s something going on here.”