In my first job out of seminary, I was the pastor of a beautiful downtown church in the very heart of Appalachia. They were going to pay me a good salary and set me up in the parsonage across the street from the country club. I was definitely off on the right foot by my earnest expectations of vocational success.

I had two suits then—that I’d gotten from a guy who’d died at one of my friend’s student churches. I had them both dry-cleaned. I bought a couple of nice shirts and had them pressed. Susan bought me an expensive Waterman fountain pen. New business cards. New office furniture. I was pretty sure that I was Milburn Drysdale.

The Sunday I got there, I met a petite 93-year-old woman named Lucille Scott. Everyone just called her Scottie.

Scottie came up to me at the pot-luck dinner after church and, apropos of nothing, gave me a big kiss. She was about 98 pounds and 4-foot-nothing. She wore a floral print shift that she’d likely had since the Beatles made their big splash on the Ed Sullivan show. And she had on those old cat-eye glasses with the Coke bottle lenses—the kind you don’t really see anymore—which made her eyes look enormous, especially when she smiled—which was often.

Scottie said to me, “I want you to come out to my house on Friday to see me.”

And I did. She was near blind and deaf, but she liked to talk. Lord, that woman liked to talk.

She talked about her family and the food she liked. She talked about her flowers, which she called Nicodemus flowers because they only bloomed at nighttime. She told me about growing up in a mining camp and what it was like before electricity and indoor plumbing, and how they had to do all their shopping at the company store owned by the coal mine—and paid for their goods not with dollars but with company scrip that ensured they couldn’t spend anything they earned outside the camp—and allowed the coal company to keep all that nice coal money right there in the family.

I went to her house regularly. I didn’t say much—not much was required of me except to be there and to listen to her tell stories.

And every time I’d get ready to leave, she gave me a big kiss.

Scottie died a little over a year after I arrived. It was sad … but she was 94 years old, so nobody was shocked. I put on the better of my two suits and buried her on a hot August day.

I missed her, though. But I didn’t have a whole lot of time—new job, lot of responsibilities. I had two suits and a fancy pen.

But I was sitting in my nice office, thinking about Scottie one day, sometime after she’d died. I’d stopped doing something important; I don’t know what it was now. But I remember thinking about her wrinkled face, and the boney finger she waved in front of her when she spoke. And I remembered her Nicodemus flowers. And it suddenly occurred to me, “This job isn’t about suits and pens and business cards. I’m not somebody special because I’ve got those things. I didn’t hit the vocational jackpot, which allows me to walk around like an important guy who plays golf at the country club on Thursdays and gets free dry-cleaning down at Sharp’s Dry Cleaners. The job isn’t the job. The job is Scottie.”

Did you ever have that? The thing isn’t the thing. The thing is something else entirely.

As I pass through middle age, I’ve discovered a secret about myself. If I’m honest, I guess I’m stretching the limits of middle age. I mean, how many 114-year-old people have you met, right?

Anyway, as I’ve settled into my dotage, I’ve discovered something disturbing about myself. I used to make fun of these geezers who’ve got nothing more exciting to do than collect bad habits, but now, apparently, I am one.

At first, it was just a convenience thing. I just needed a little help to get through the day. But then I’d be sitting there stressing out about how much I have to do, and I’d feel that urge coming on. I’d think, “Man, I’ve got to get some, or I’m going to go nuts with all the pressure.”

So, this is my sad tale. I’m just going to be honest. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by trying to hide it anymore.

I’m a pen and journal guy. Okay, there, I’ve said it. I have boxes of pens and a box of blank journals. Sure, I could make it through the day with a Bic and some college ruled paper. But, I mean, come on. What are we … animals? I love the feel of a good fountain pen, the precision of a .38 millimeter Japanese roller ball, scratching across the finely lined pages of a Moleskin. Ah, the heart soars just thinking about it.

But every time I use them, I have to start with a pen in hand and a blank page. I don’t know about you, but I find that obsessing over the tools of work is an excellent substitute for, you know, actually working.

Thinking about the work. Preparing yourself to work. Getting all the tools ready for work. Important stuff. But the most important question remains.