The pace of our usual life, the sense that we’re always Doing Important Stuff (or at least called to be doing so) sometimes makes me think we’ve all forgotten how to just take a little aimless stroll. Perhaps it does feel like a forbidden pleasure when I know a project’s been lying there waiting for my attention. All the better, then, for its seeming truancy.

I’m happy to take the medical advice against sedentary death as a validation of my going for regular meanders off the normal path, if it takes me away from my current tasks, however directionless my saunters may appear. The mere physical reset is practically guaranteed to get my brain working a little better, and that alone is never a bad thing. The bits and bytes of information that slip into my mind both consciously and subconsciously act to refresh me for the work in hand and to remind me of other things I might have missed or laid aside.

I shan’t dissemble about it, though: when I get up and move, it’s mostly because I can feed my infatuation with observation. I’m just another, albeit less smooth, flâneur slouching about the avenue in search of stories to be filed under Little Adventures. No matter if they’re mine or—more likely—entirely imagined scenarios built around the lives happening all around me, to restock this collection is to refuel myself and find purpose again in both my work and my play. Then I can stroll on back to the real task at hand, and if the street has quieted or the hall emptied by then, I’ve populated my imaginings with enough enlivening Important Stuff to keep me going until my next outing.