(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

Piddling

verb (used without object), piddled, piddling.

1.to spend time in a wasteful, trifling, or ineffective way; dawdle (often followed by around): He wasted the day piddling around.

The weather is bringing many things to our lives besides the threat of tornadoes. Over breakfast this weekend, some friends were talking about the agenda they had for the day mostly involving the running of errands. As they were leaving and announcing the intent to get to their regimen I pointed out what they were really embarking on was a day of piddling.

The dictionary gives a poor definition to what the word should really impart. To understand it fully you would have to dig into a broader frame of reference. For instance, these same friends shared their love of breakfast for dinner on Sunday evenings.

This condition is most likely brought about particularly when they have piddled their way through a weekend and didn’t make a special trip for groceries, leaving pancakes and scrambled eggs as a natural. I regard this not as a lack of industry but a sublime condition of having the luxury of piddling. In fact, my friends are quite industrious and have earned the right to piddle their way through a weekend.

If one of the Pew or Kaiser studies cared to examine such behavior, I suspect piddlers are likely more happy than most people. In addition, they probably have lower blood pressure and less prescription drugs to take than the universe of non-piddlers.

My father was the king of piddlers. Watching him pack a car for a hunting trip was excruciating and frustrating. It was mostly because he would give me a target time of departure and I would always buy it in spite of the fact that it was consistently 1-2 hours after the original estimate due to his piddling.

I wasn’t surprised to learn there is a Professional Piddlers Association. How they ever get any aspiring members to complete the membership form is a bit unclear but their aims seem noble.

Their website describes the group as:

An organization dedicated to individuals who have the self-confidence, the discipline, and the means to piddle around doing:

“What they want

When they want

Where they want

How they want”

Professional piddlers (PP’s) become involved in projects of their choosing without regard for money or publicity, but simply out of a desire to use their time as they choose, without doing harm to anyone else.

There are times when a professional piddler will behave like a traditional piddler and just piddle around doing and accomplishing nothing except filling a time void in their life, which is necessary for good mental health.

People who just piddle around often offend others since social norms place a great deal of pressure on people to be continually working towards a worthwhile goal. PP’s have goals, they just don’t have timelines and are rarely influenced by the opinions of others. Peer pressure tends to have a negative effect on those who just want to piddle around doing what they enjoy with concern for an end product.

I’m not certain piddling in groups is productive unless it is a group of men at a deer lease or a group of women at a place that sells flowers in greenhouses.

Piddlers should only piddle together by mutual consent. Non-piddlers and piddlers should avoid being around each other when there is something to do involving a deadline.

When my dad was at the peak of his game, we were putting out two newspapers per day five days per week on strict deadlines. His piddling was mostly away from the office and it was well earned.

There’s a lot of good piddling weather all week. But don’t try to schedule it or add much structure to it, just let it happen if you can.