I'm Christian Rubin and this is a little happier.

As parents, it's very tempting to try to prod our children

into doing useful or enriching activities like,

you should be playing chess or practice the piano or play tennis.

And sometimes children want to do things that just look like a giant waste of time,

or at least my children do things that look like a giant waste of time.

And I always remind myself of the many examples that I've heard of,

where what looked like wasted time to an adult ended up being very important and useful

when that child grew up themselves.

And I thought of this because I was reading a book called How to Decorate.

And I was reading it because of my current obsession with color.

I'm reading every book that I can get my hands on about color.

And the book How to Decorate was put out by Farrow and Ball,

which is a very well-known maker of paints and wallpapers.

And Joa stood home as the woman who wrote the book.

And in it she explained something that I thought was a great illustration of what is wasted time.

She writes,

I had no formal training.

I am Farrow and Ball homegrown, nurtured by an astonishing group of people.

However, as a child, I did spend an inordinate amount of time rearranging my

carindosh crayons to see how different color combinations worked.

My doll's house was constantly redecorated,

...