Work ethics

When she got tired of one kind of work, she switched to another. "The best kind of rest is a change of occupation," she used to say. There was no taking a break for her. No relaxing in front of the TV for a minute or two, no taking quick naps. She never wanted to just finish an article or two of a newspaper she perused during dinner before going back to whatever else demanded attention. In general, she never read more than she had set out to read, nor skipped chapters of the densest novels, nor threw any book away half finished. Reading, like everything else, was a job, a task to do, and she sat down to it with a freshly sharpened pencil in her hand and a clean notepad laid out in front of her. She never read on the couch, lying down, but always at a desk, in the upright position, both feet firmly planted on the parquet floor. And she never read books she didn't think were worth reading. Only once ever did her body get the better of her, and then she simply collapsed on the couch in the middle of a busy, sunny afternoon.