I think I am working too hard.

“I know you are working too hard!” said Mr. Chattering last night. “Read Andrew Sullivan, read the great bloggers! You can save yourself some effort by sticking with just a few ideas, instead of always writing up a new topic. YOU are just stacking artfully-crafted little bits, and always changing subjects.”

“Did you read what I wrote today?”

Mr. Chattering’s eyes seem caught in the headlights. “Did I? I think I read one of them. The other was too long. I don’t read long blog items.”

Oh dear, oh dear, Chattering Mind fails to hold her husband’s interest.

So he drifts off to sleep, and I stay awake on my side of the mattress, reading Andrew Sullivan and Mickey Kaus on Mr. Chattering’s portable computer. (Really bad form to do this, by the way. I somehow could feel the radiation from the small machine sinking through the bed covers, into my legs. Toxic shock! I think it’s not a good idea to have your computer actually sit on your body.) I also quickly cruised The Huffington Post. Zing! Ping! Oy! There’s a lot of blogging going on out there.

Yeah, I could see my husband’s point. I could be zippier, and more informal. Kaus adds new thoughts in the form of P.S’s and P.P.P.P.S’s. Gad.

I remember weeping huge, hot tears over how hard I worked–and for such little pay!–as I was stretched out on my acupuncturist’s table many years ago. I was heartbroken because a magazine editor had expressed annoyance with me by saying “everything you do becomes too big a deal.” At that time, I was a writer who subscribed to Red Smith’s old line “There’s nothing to writing. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.”

And then as I wept, my acupuncturist gently shared with me the Chinese concepts of “big heart” and “little heart.” There are some tasks in life that require a big heart, he explained. Other projects, call only upon your little heart. If you bring a big heart to every task, you will burn out.

Of course, I want to bring an enormous heart to this blog. But there are ways to write more efficiently so I can leave my desk at one thirty, for one instance, and have a swim before picking up the kids. Or finally see ‘BrokeBack Mountain,’ for another instance. There is this notion that work is only good for the world if you beat yourself up to deliver it. I’d like to break from that mindset.

I know I am not alone. Are you draining your “big heart” by working too hard too?

P.P.P.P.P.S. No time to Feng Shui my purse today. We’ll have to do it Monday!