The Productivity of an Unproductive Week

Saturday I got back from spending twelve days in Daniels WV with my family at a little house my father was born and raised in lovingly referred to as “Wilburn Hill” [1].

I love Wilburn Hill because it’s a place that we can go to just relax and connect with one another

There’s no internet
No cable
No home phone
In other words family members are forced to (gasp) actually spend time talking!

Sadly we are usually only there for a day or two, and most of that time is spent on jobs around the house [2]. The good news is this keeps us pretty busy.

Thats actually what made this trip to Wilburn Hill different for me…and quite annoying.

You see I happen to be a work-horse. This means I’m happiest when doing a hard job (preferably for other people) and absolutely hate being bored. As you can imagine after the usual two days of jobs around the house we ran out of things to do…which for me was a BIG PROBLEM.

My parents and brothers family didn’t mind this. In fact our reason for spending that long at Wilburn Hill was to relax which meant sitting around doing nothing (I believe the technical term used was lollygag). For most people doing nothing is actually welcomed, but not for me.

Slowly over our time there my frustration began to build

It started on Tuesday when we walked into our eighth souvenir/antique/craft shop
It grew as I waited on a bench outside JC Penny’s with all of the other grumpy men waiting for my mother to get done clothes shopping
And almost reached a boiling point as we spent a whole morning walking around a little town

The thing that kept going through my head was “I can’t wait to get home so I can accomplish something!.” But the frustration blinded me to the many things that had actually been accomplished.

I played chess with my niece (and lost)

Enjoyed a tea party

Raced around the house

And yes…I did push my niece out-of-the-way so that I could win the race 🙂

We painted some seashells (and Uncle John)

I made my mom a birthday cake

And spent time with my brother who was on his way back from taking PHD classes in Louisville Kentucky

The thing is few of our days on Wilburn Hill could be called productive since most of the time was spent relaxing. But the memories made during our unproductive days were worth all the forty-hour workweeks in the world.