Up From The Long Weekend

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

We emerged from Memorial day weekend with the certainty that it wasn’t long enough and the funny thing is I don’t think I had a single drink all weekend, and we didn’t even do anything fun – mostly because we used it to change stuff from the loaner freezer back to our regular freezer which seems to be – fingers crossed – working.  We also had to buy younger kid a new mattress.

Well, had to is a form of speech, but he was sleeping on a bottom-grade seventeen year old mattress, in a bed that was first ours, then his brother’s and finally his.  The mattress has been horribly broken for at least ten years, and he was too big for the bed and had to sleep corner to corner.  We’d meant to buy him a new one two years ago, but we hit a rough patch financially and it was impossible.  Also we had the vague idea he’d move out “any year now” and so we’d get him stuff when he left.  But with him fixed in the house at least till he finishes his BA (two and a half years) and the bed grossly inadequate…  well… The royalty check for DST – supposing the agency ever passes it along (rolls eyes) – should take care of it.  And they had a really good sale on a floor model.

Of course this means getting rid of the bed which joins a long collection of stuff we need to put up for sale soon.  That’s okay.  One of the hardest things to learn in life – from my POV – is that I can’t do things instantly.  Say I decide to write a novel – I can’t try to finish it all in a day.  The work doesn’t fit the time.

This seems subtly wrong.

Stuff like “I painted the room, but it will have to wait till tomorrow to finish moving stuff in” seems even more wrong.  Go figure that.

And just when I got used to the idea a task can take multiple days to complete, I find myself getting older and running out of spoons sooner, so that everything seems to take a completely unreasonable amount of time.  That’s life.

In the middle of the night — when my brain tends to come up with really strange jewels of reasoning like “the entire motor of human history is the flip flop shoe,” which seem perfectly logical in the middle of the night but when I wake up in the morning make me wonder what exactly goes on in my dreaming brain – I came up with this strange mirror moment.

You know how at least in my writing – I don’t know if anyone else uses this.  As far as I know I came up with the expression as it applies to writing – my characters face a mirror moment somewhere just before or after the black moment.  This is when they see themselves as they are, with no illusion, and it usually allows them the impetus to race to the finish with new energy/goals.

Well, for the last several years I’ve been having trouble getting things done in what even I think is a timely manner (meaning not a novel in a day) as well as organizing my day. I know part of this – which got worse after the possibility of indie – hinges on the sheer amount of confusion and work raining down on me.  The solution would seem to be to organize myself so I write in the morning and publish in the afternoon or vice versa.  BUT unfortunately these things are never that simple.  What happens when one of the cats is sick all morning?  Do I move the writing to the afternoon?  Do I go ahead and skip it?  What if something is due in writing?  Do I just skip publishing?

What ends up happening is that, in many ways I try and it all gets overrun and I give up.

But the mirror moment was more fundamental.  It was something like “I keep looking for little breaks and little consolations, and in the end destroy my concentration and my ability to finish things.”

Look, I suppose in many ways I had a fairly dreary childhood.  That’s not how I remember it.  And it sort of depends on how you squint at it.  I had free roaming rights of most of the neighborhood, I had books that I kept finding tucked away in weird places by my various ancestors.  I had grandparents always ready to entertain me and any variety of pets.

What I didn’t have, and this is in common with most people until this past century, was “variety.”  I was fourteen the first time my family went on vacation together.  Any book I had got re-read to shreds, because you never knew when I’d find a batch of new ones (buying them was really not an option till I was twelve and had a bus pass.  Then that’s where my birthday money went.  Asking relatives for books was worse than useless.  Even my dad seemed to think I should be reading fairytales, when I was in my Dumas phase.)  Even in terms of food, I woke up and it was a weekday, it was probably fish and rice.  (Sunday was chicken and rice.)  I could count on one hand the number of times we ate out till I got married. Chocolate had to be imported because Portuguese-made was indistinguishable from a bar of soap, so we usually got a couple of bars brought by immigrant relatives who came on vacation and stretched it.

No, I’m not complaining.  I wasn’t hungry (not till much later, and that limited) and I had clothes, and I had a warm place to sleep in.

BUT I got certain things stuck in my head as what we’ll call for lack of a better term “feast days” – I don’t mean liturgical feast, but special days, marked by something extraordinary: my mom baked a cake. We went on a picnic (this happened twice a summer or so.) We visited a castle or a museum.

There were things that got stuck there as “consolations” too – usually having to do with food.  For instance, if I was in finals and going nuts with anxiety (the kids come by it naturally) my mom would quietly come and put one of her hoarded chocolate squares next to me.  Or she would buy me a few (sugar-lemon) cookies when she went to the bakery in the morning.  Sometime after I finished the school year, grades being satisfactory –no more than two Bs though I was allowed a C in crafts and drawing (curiously though I’ve seen found I have a natural talent for it, that permission meant I never had more than a C.  The permission was granted because my brother can’t draw understandable stick figures – and my parents figured if he was allowed Cs I should be too.  Anyway, not sure what that means about motivation and talent.  I didn’t find out I had talent for it until I no longer had a class.) – mom would take me shoe shopping.  This usually – at least as I got older – extended to purse shopping, school bag for the next year shopping, hair ornament shopping, and just generally a day’s worth of girly things (it was in one of these we came across the hole in the wall dusty family shop where, high up on the wall, in shelves, they had between the wars (or possibly pre WWI) vintage millinery which the elderly lady sold at the price marked.  This is how I went through college in silk lace stockings.)  The trip ended up at a coffee shop which served something like fifteen scoops of ice cream in a cup that looked like a Viking helmet.  It was called The Viking, and it was doused in chocolate sauce, whipped cream and stuck with wafers.  Mom used to say she got ill just looking at it, but I loved it.  She would sip her tea and watch me eat it.  (Those of you who’ve raised kids know just how much fun that is.)

Dad was more likely – from the time I was twelve or so – to pour me out a little Port wine, or something of the sort, though weirdly – though I have a drink now and then (like twice a month) that didn’t get stuck in my head as a red letter day.  Probably because it was rarer than mom’s indulgences.

If you’re thinking I had an awful lot of fun – that’s true.  But what you’re not getting is how rare it was.  Same thing with say snacks between meals, or with taking the day off to do something fun.  I had to live on the last of those experiences for weeks, sometimes months.

According to my mirror moment, the problem is that once I was able to indulge myself, I started giving myself all sorts of consolation moments, until my entire life is nothing but a string of consolation moments, which leads to both difficulty keeping commitments, and to weight issues and other stuff.

Now, this is not strictly true.  These middle of the night insights are always odd and exaggerated.  I mean, lest you imagine I sit around munching bonbons and reading Museum today all day, I don’t.

On the other hand, it occurred to me I got into some bad habits.  You do things you have to do to survive tough times.  The toughest here, probably, were when I was trying to raise very small kids AND break into publishing.  I remember getting up in the morning at five am to get two hours of writing before I had to get the kids up.  From then on my life ran on rails – meaning there was a scheduled station every few minutes.  Drop kids off at school.  Come home and clean (or go shopping, depending on week day.)  Get smaller kid back at noon.  Feed him lunch.  Put him down for nap.  Do laundry. Get older kid from school.  Start preparations for dinner.  Have dinner.  Clean kitchen.  Get kids ready for bed.  Rinse, repeat.

When you have a day like that after day after day after day, the temptation to have just another square of chocolate or to bake a cake because you – and the kids – deserve it, is immense.  It is no coincidence my fall from grace after losing a lot of weight on low carbs came on 9/11 when, unable to take it anymore, I started frying batch after batch of doughnuts.

The problem with that sort of thing comes when the pressure comes off a little, though.  Suddenly you can take a day or two to just read.  You can go for walks because you can.  Take a day off and go bother the animals at the zoo.

And after a while your focus has shifted and work is an interruption in your consolations.

Is it that bad?  No.  Do I indulge myself in way too many “times off” (usually of an hour or so)?  A bit.  Maybe a couple of times a week.

But the focus is a problem.  Even though I don’t take weekends off, metaphorically speaking I’ve been living for the weekend, orienting my life to those escapes, rather than to what I must and want to do.

I need to refocus.  I need to wake in the morning, not with “I hope I can go for a walk today” but with “I must get this and this and this done.”  And maybe then I can hard schedule a day off a week.

It’s worth a try.  Or it’s possible that the middle-of-the-night insight made as much sense as flip flops as drivers of civilization.  We shall see.  Changing the focus to what means something instead of the little escapes seems a worthwhile endeavor, anyway.

I know why I shifted the focus away from it.  When I was going traditional publishing only, and everything was out of my control, to focus on the work would just make the burnout worse, so I focused on the hope of reward, of “break” which started coming all too often.  But that has changed.  And the mind must be retooled.  (Which for both individuals and societies is the hardest thing to do.)

I’ll put up some very slight subscriber content in an hour or so, (I’ll start it after I get another cup of caffeine, but I’m accounting for possible interruptions) and you should definitely read Mad Genius Club (Amanda Green’s post) today.

I’ll be in the back, building new hardware for my head.

 

95 thoughts on “Up From The Long Weekend”

    1. Same problem… plus I have had medical problems start just as I start writing again. *sigh I will not be able to start again until Friday.

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  2. > we didn’t even do anything fun – mostly because we used it to change stuff from the loaner freezer back to our regular freezer

    I had EXACTLY the same reaction to the weekend, and for somewhat similar reasons.

    Fiance and I aren’t full-out preppers, but we both see tough times ahead. This weekend was dedicated to plowing up the entire side yard, digging out hundreds of pounds of rocks, rototilling in manure to improve the soil, building trellises to support berry bushes and tomato plants, etc.

    It wasn’t FUN.

    But it was SATISFYING.

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    1. If we had a side yard… Part of what we need to do and meant to do this weekend but didn’t have time to was sit down and make a list of what we need to do to the house so we can sell it, and then a list of what we want in the NEXT house (an outdoor building or enclosed porch for Greebo is a much. He’ll never be an indoor cat, but he’s getting old and can’t weather CO winters much longer) and a back or side yard for veggies is another.

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      1. Fiance and I are going to move to a farm in the next 3-5 years. Maybe NH, maybe some other red state. We like the idea of being around other liberty-minded folks. (Our location hunting is a bit complicated in that we’ve got other preferences as well – mountains, trees, bookstores, a decent sushi restaurant… ;-)

        Our garden will serve us for a few years, then we’ll graduate into the big leagues: chickens, goats, a small tractor…

        Speaking of relocating near liberty minded folks, I’ve started a discussion with a few internet friends who have similar plans (we jokingly call it the “weird state project” ;-). Maybe at some pt I should post to the Baen Bar or similar place and see if there are not-yet-internet-friends with similar thoughts.

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        1. mountains, trees, bookstores, a decent sushi restaurant…

          I know a place where you can get most of those at least… Hey bearcat, do they have a decent sushi place in your area? I’d like to know for myself as well. :)

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          1. Have you considered Texas? There’s the hill country near Austin and Houston and DFW.. There’s small farms for sale within 2 hours of these places.

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            1. But — SIGH!! — no mountains. With the exception of Guadalupe Peak, Texas has no mountains to speak of. As a former denizen of Western Washington, I find I really miss mountains. I *don’t* miss the cold or the humidity (bone-chilling in winter).
              And here in the Hill Country, we do have sushi restaurants of several types – dedicated as well as incidental – and even major supermarkets offer it. #1 son especially likes it after having spent time in Connecticut.
              And compared to many other states, land in Texas (except urban) is fairly reasonable.
              But no mountains. <>

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              1. i hope you don’t mind, but I keep sending pictures of Texas Hill Country, and employment statistics for Texas as a whole to both my kids. My daughter, pre-pharm, is considering it. I can promise she’ll be a good citizen :)

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                1. Why should I mind? I live there! And my wife has come to the conclusion that it’s one of the nicer places around to live, even with her having relative in Washington.
                  A Fall excursion to Lost Maples.
                  Taking the Willow City loop in April and May when the Bluebonnets are blooming in scattered profusions. With accents of Indian Tears amongst them.
                  Seeing the magnificent buildup of thunderclouds as a storm develops, then seeing those clouds advance with bands and streamers of rain stretching from cloud to ground..
                  A ‘good ol’ fashioned’ electrical storm in late July or August, as storm clouds battle with dry air and release lightning akin to the battle of the Norse gods.
                  I’ve suggested Texas to several relatives. They haven’t taken me up on it as yet, but as things worsen, they just might.
                  And there’s no one more Conservative than a newly minted Texan! YeeHaw!

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        2. My friends have been talking about this for years – one of them finally up and bought some property, which we now refer to as “Mark’s Gulch”. But at least some people are taking some serious thought into the matter – at least an hour out of a big city, off the main highways, potable water on the property…

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        4. Utah is one of the most liberty-minded places around. Decent sushi in the city/suburbs of the main metro area, at least according to my fish-eating family members. Lots of Thai restaurants, too. No good Chinese, though. If you can bear being a minority in a very socially closed-in culture, you’ll love the prep culture you’ll find here … though it’s not in the organizational structure you might expect, it’s much more individual. If you’re going for acreage, you’ll find a lot of likewise aspirations among your neighbors. If I remember rightly, you’re Catholic … not the best access for that if you’re out far enough for acreage.

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        5. There’s a lot to be said for North County San Diego. Admittedly the CA state govt are spendthrift morons but there’s a lot to like about this particular spot of CA. In particular the fact that there are a few thousand marines nearby (not to mention hordes of sailors) means that the political tone isn’t the stereotypical coastal liberal one. Lets face Darrell Issa is the local congresscritter and there’s plenty of Tea Party folks around too.

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    2. What size were the rocks? Our side yard was previously gravel, and while large rocks are relatively easy for me to remove (till deep, toss it aside as the tiller brings it up), we’ve had a devil of a time trying to get the remainder of the gravel off/out of the soil. You seem a knowledgeable sort, have you any suggestions?

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      1. This method is Tedious, but what part of garden bed prep isn’t?

        Make a square wood frame about 3′ to a side. 2X4s work, but any sturdy grade seasoned lumber will suffice. Stretch heavy-duty metal mesh across one face, prop up on cinder blocks or what have you. Shovel soil into frame and rake it until the dirt sifts through, discarding rocks and roots as you go.

        Obviously, the size of the mesh will determine what size rocks you extract and how tedious the process is.

        I STRONGLY advise investing in audio books and MP3 type player, and a good length rake/hoe handle unless you like spending your days in a half crouch.

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        1. I walk extensively for exercise.

          I recently planted some flowers, which entailing quite a bit of crouching to dig and stuff.

          I discovered the hard way that the muscles are not the same.

          Rake/hoe sounds very wise to me.

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          1. It is probably clear that the type of rake used is not, repeat: NOT, a long-tine leaf rake but a short-tine bow rake or grass/thatching rake. Typically you will use the heavy spine connecting the tines, although the tines can be used so long as you are careful to avoid catching them in the mesh.

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            1. it is also not, I repeat NOT a regency rake. While you can strain rocks through their teeth, they whine a lot as you do it and it gets tiresome. (Sorry, sorry. Just had argument over self pub with the unthinking over on FB and it makes me weird.)

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            2. Yeah. If the tines catch in the mesh, it truly impairs the rake’s progress.

              *looks up, sees a dozen carp inbound, runs*

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              2. Begins loading carp canister in the howitzer…

                Double entendre atop a pun. Summary execution for violations of the laws of war.

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                1. Fire Mission, Writers in the open, Grid 13SierraEchoDelta1012403404, Spotting round, 2 shell carp fuze VT, Danger close, over.

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              3. Side note to Sarah: The Colorado Chub (a form of carp) is on the endangered species list. Please refrain from using these fish: instead, import silver (Chinese) carp from Illinois/Iowa/Wisconsin. If you’re lucky, they’ll PAY YOU to take them off their hands. They work best frozen. Each can weigh up to twenty pounds, but using multiples is admissible, as long as it’s an odd number.

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          2. I just started doing mid-day walks– some problems I have been having with the meds causing muscle disruptions– so it takes a lot of time away. Then my spoons are limited so I have to take a nap afterwards. *sigh But, I must walk so that I don’t fall apart like in the last few months (pinched nerves, etc, etc.)

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            2. I worked up slowly to that walking.

              Though it was quite depressing to get a pedometer and find that I must have been doing 10,000 steps regularly, because I had done it without effort my first day, and didn’t ache at all.

              that meant I had to ramp upward to burn calories.

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              1. Yea– I used to walk five miles every other day bc (before chemo). It was a drastic drop to barely walking to the bathroom. I am so happy that I am walking so much lately.

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                1. Both of you can do my walking for me. Even climbing the stairs can be horrendous. Arthur is a female dog, especially in the feet, knees and hips. I NEED to do it, I just CAN’T without suffering more than it’s worth. Even my doctor agrees…

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                    3. I also say Yes to glucosamine chondroitin. I started taking it but didn’t realize how much it helped until the day I forgot my pills altogether. Got home from work and saw that I hadn’t taken any that day, and every joint was aching.

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                    4. I put in around 12 miles on concrete every work day, and depending on what needs doing, shift a couple hundred pounds or a couple tons of product. I personally prefer the glucosamine/chondroitin/msm mix, but swear by the stuff’s effectiveness in general.

                      My Calmer Half, who finds walking without a cane to be a real challenge on the good days, has also found it helps a bit; stairs have gone from completely dreaded to rather disliked, as long as he takes it regularly.

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                    5. I only take it when in crisis mode, which takes the form of my fingers locking into claws. They’ve been doing that since I was nineteen and by now I should be incapacitated for typing, but I take g/c when it gets bad, and it passes.

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                    6. Yah – I get “trigger lock”, too, and have to force fingers to uncurl. It happened once while I was digging in a pocket for change. I find a large screwdriver (the tool, not the drink) or broomstick can cause the joints to release.

                      Bloody annoyin’, it is.

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                    7. Yes– when I have to go on cytoxan, my fingers will lock, which means that I quit doing my crafts and type more. Also I drink a little gatorade. When I go off cytoxan (in six months more or less), the fingers quits locking– btw are you checking your potassium/calcium/sodium/magnesium levels– these are needed for proper working of muscles.

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                    1. That isn’t so hard. Five minutes getting downstairs and grabbing coffee, five minutes back up to brush teefs and use the lieu, two minutes to the computer … heck, I bet I knock off forty minutes by supper time or shortly after.

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                    3. You know, some tests have determined you can grow muscles from imagining exercise in detail. Maybe you guys (Cyn, RES and Mike) should write stories about runners, long distance walkers, etc…

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                    6. That’s just silly. A travel mug or re-purposed wineskin is far more practical. I have experimented with an IV drip, but doggone it, I like the flavor … and it made others in the office jealous that they hadn’t thought of it.

                      At least, I think that was the reason for the odd looks they would give it.

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                    7. Split it up into 8 times of 5 minutes? I feel for your situation, I’m in a similar one.

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                    8. I find that if I am able to read while walking the time will fly past. While there are obvious problems attendant on burying your nose in a book while you walk, I find it keeps the mind from wandering as it might be prone to do with an audio book.

                      I have found that reading on a treadmill/elliptical is less satisfying than free-range walking, possibly because with a t/e device all you have to do is step off the machine, while during a free-range walk you have to walk home.

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                    10. RES, you know my second fantasy device, after the EReader, was a set of glasses that will throw up text in one lens so I can read while walking.

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                  3. If you can gag down some of that joint junk and try an eliptical, might help? Set it to zero or one or something– I did it while pregnant. While not even close to arthritis, I was pretty creaky for a mid-twenties gal but could manage an hour easily.

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              2. I used to work at a fabric store and started wearing a pedometer to work when my doctor told me I needed to move more. In a 4 hour shift, I put in 5 miles behind the cutting table. I gave up on the walking more idea and started doing yoga.

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                1. Oh yeah. I put on the pedometer in the morning and take it off at night. I can walk five miles on a walk, but get twelve miles for the day — which I know, because I did it once. 0:) Ten’s more typical. (And five or seven if I didn’t get in the walk.)

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      2. Have you tried square foot style container gardening? After the second year the ground is easily prepared for planting, most rocks above pebble size are out of it, and all you have to do is add mulch yearly to keep the soil nicely loose. And, in case of inclement weather (late freezes) the squares are easily covered for protection.
        I’ve been doing it for several years, and even for a heart patient like me the work requirements are easily met.

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  4. Something I’ve been meaning to try–waiting for a feast day to start it, ahem–is a piece of advice from Tony Robbins. When you wake up, say, “I get to go to work today!” It’s a bit of mental ju-jitsu, changing the focus from irritation and exhaustion to gratitude.

    I know I should be much more grateful. Why is it so hard?

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    1. An extended period of unemployment will make it much easier to say “I get to go to work today!” with proper gratitude.

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  5. Growing up my family celebrated birthdays and holidays with my grandparents taking us to the local Chinese restaurant, there to indulge in egg rolls, chow mein and egg fu yong. Ever since I have associated eating Chinese with festivities and occasions, although I eat it more regularly and a rather different menu.

    It required a deliberate effort to make the association conscious and deliberate, but it enriches my day whenever I can eat Chinese, even though I can eat Chinese whenever I want. (Regrettably, most available Chinese restaurants are mediocre or expensive, and my back and knees no longer permit the cooking of it for myself.)

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    1. ….I am now picturing the adorable little puffballs at the zoo wearing Disney Talking Animal style Chinese clothes and puttering around the kitchen.

      I’ve got to get the pictures we got posted for you, too– only time I’ve ever seen the animals other than your icon, and they looked like they should have little thought bubbles saying “d*mn it’s cold!”

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  6. I’d love to have a weekend to finish the honeydo projects around the house. Like finishing the bookshelves in the office. And doing the trim in the downstairs bathroom. And building a bulkhead around the drain pipe in the living room.

    Trouble is: the weekend is when I write. And I **really** need to get this novel published.

    M

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  7. Funny, how quickly one forgets the interruptions inevitable with having children. I suppose I always had some vague idea about going back to work after the kids were in school. But somehow, being on _their_ schedule is amazingly disruptive. _Everything_ else has to work around that. School hours are _not_ flexible. They are _not_ suggested times you ought to get you child there.

    It’ll be interesting to see if more home/online/mixed schooling changes that.

    And if we writing parents get more or less writing time, as a result of having more control over our schedules. Sarah, you had the experience of home schooling. What do you think?

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    1. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ;)
      Seriously, I loved it a lot, but part of what I loved was taking walks with the kid, getting time to do stuff like visit museums together.. not good for writing.
      Also, my experience was different since I had to take a kid who’d decided he couldn’t learn, and turn him around and show him learning was fun. With all that, I wrote six books that year, which means… it was more flexible.

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  8. I finished the draft of the WIP and rolled right into fine-proofing the much-revised non-fic so I can get it onto the publishers’ schedule. Because of going to Germany to work for a few weeks next month, I keep seeing piles of “gotta do!” Which may be just as well, since it keeps me out of treat-myself mode, when I need to be working and applying for a couple of jobs.

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  9. ” It is no coincidence my fall from grace after losing a lot of weight on low carbs came on 9/11 when, unable to take it anymore, I started frying batch after batch of doughnuts.”

    And there’s the problem. Your body can handle huge dumps of carbs just fine, as long as they aren’t too close together. There’s a reason that the body-builders eat huge amounts of carbs, but only one day a week. It’s chronic carbs that cause the problems.

    So for me, what’s worked for long-term sustainability has been planned high-carb days. When I’m in the mood, I decide that come Saturday, I’m going to start the day with pancakes or waffles. Metabolically, a rare high-carb day won’t hurt. And psychologically, it shortcuts the “damn, I’ll never be able to eat xxx” feelings.

    And as far as maintaining goes, that it’s for a defined period makes going back to my routine of low-carb purely automatic.

    There’s a huge difference between “I can’t stand this, I just have to have some donuts”, and “today, I’m going to replenish my glycogen stores.”

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    1. This gibes with my totally unscientific theory that for most of humanity’s development, sugars and starches were only available occasionally, but more frequently in late summer/early fall. It makes sense that having a large influx of them is a signal to our bodies to put on weight and slow things down — winter is coming! Put on reserves and stop running around so much! Get ready to hole up!

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      1. When I was in college the first time, I was at an all-girls institution. Every year, when the fall time change came around, the dining hall ran out of food. The dining hall manager had notes going back 25 years, and it happened every year. We always ate more for the week following the time change, and then settled back to average. Every spring, we always ate less for a week after the shift to daylight savings time, then ramped back up to average. Which supports your not too scientific hunch, Rob.

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    2. I CAN’T have carbs, but that’s for other reasons ;) Carbs are the trigger for my eczema. Have two chocolates spend a week with palms in raw flesh (when I have to TYPE) is too high a price. But I know what you mean. I usually allow myself to indulge (and pay the price) on my birthday, by eating desert. No weight penalty and if I’m careful (dark chocolate or something like that) I don’t get too bad on the eczema. Provided the stress factors aren’t too high at the time.

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        1. Yeah. Fat is not actually a problem, if not paired with carbs. And I’ve learned to do all sorts of low-carb deserts. but hte chocolate bar is all there, and… and… yeah.

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  10. Funny, dat.

    With me, my stress reliever is …well, yard work. Yeah. I like mowing the lawn …even bought a non-power mower last year (is there anything with blades that Fisker doesn’t make) so it would be more, umm, relaxing. And quieter. (Yeah, maybe a bit more exercise-y too.)

    But the “funny, dat” comes with the realization just recently that it’s not like I’m doing a *project* when I’m out doing my best imitation of a topiariaist (is that a word) to my poor hedges …I’m **relaxing**.

    So I don’t have to *finish* what I’m doing (i.e., if duty calls, or my wife needs some computer help, or the neighbor’s dog wanders over to be friendly, or I just get distracted-by-who-knows-what); the lawn and the bushes and the trees and the tools aren’t going anywhere. They’ll still be there. I’ll still get that stress-relief when I get back to mowin’-and-clippin’.

    It’s like I just – finally – grokked into one of Tolkien’s Maxims ….

    It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

    Meh.

    …it sounded more profound during the warm-ish sunny afternoon a few weeks ago when I stopped pushing uphill and took a break to go inside and get a cold water bottle out of the fridge …which is something that is – sadly, in retrospect – way outside my usual/previous lawn-mowing behaviour pattern.

    …but your column reminded me of that.

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    1. Gladly a ticket to my home I would get you.
      Seriously, I got the lawn mowed, then it rained! And rained every 3-4 days, just enough to keep the ground wet enough to prevent mowing. I now have weeds shoulder high.

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      1. I remember the time it rained for a fortnight. We had a nice silvery lawn from all the seed pods. The first dry day, they mowed, even though the lawn mower was leaving tracks in the mud puddles.

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        1. We got that fortnight+ of rain back in July 2002. Depending on whose rain gauge you believed, our are got somewhere between 25 and 40 inches of rain. Weather Channel reported 25 inches, but I know that wasn’t where it hit the hardest.

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    2. I’m with you on the yard work as relaxing. Monday was…stressful with kids falling off the rails and bouncing off the walls left right and center. I managed to get outside to pull weeds for about 15 minutes and after that life was much, much better. I didn’t finish, not by a long stretch, but the activity was more than worth it.

      Sure, there are still more weeds, but there always are. More relaxation opportunities.

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  11. So if you’re finding it hard to finish things may I suggest an automated nagger. My company is using https://idonethis.com/ because we’re very distributed and find it hard to keep track of what we’re all doing.

    On those days where I get overwehelmed with stuff, I find it to be a useful way to force myself to actually finish something so that I can log that I did something.

    I done this charges $5.user/month and is really a business thing and you could probably do something similar with any numer of free tools/sites (google calendar perhaps?). OTOH $5/month isn’t much AND the thing about paying for something means you (well I) feel I ought to get value for money by using it.

    Regarding exercise. I like dailymile.com as the log tool and runkeeper.com for recording the actual breakdowns of my runs. You’ll find me on both as masgramondou if you want to have inspiration/competition/whatever

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    1. Um… the big issue with walking/running right now is that I need to take a son with me, as our neighborhood has turned… interesting. Mind you, in summer that’s okay, but getting one of them to come out in winter is a chore.
      As for the nagging — what I really need is an office with a locking door, or in a separate part of the house. This house has always been horrible for writing/deadlines because not only is my office half the bedroom, but I can’t close the door. Due to a peculiarity in heating/cooling this room freezes/boils with the door closed.
      Yeah, yeah, working on getting ready to move…

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  12. OT, but just to get this out of my system . . . I HATE LATE SPRING, I HATE SUPERCELLS, and I HATE NOCTURNAL JETSTREAKS . . . *pant, pant* OK, back to work. No one hurt, no major damage (just roofs, signs, trees, and powerlines), but I really detest spring.

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