Miscellaneous Rambling
Like every working adult, I suppose, I live in quest of the perfect group of days. Days filled with a reasonable amount of work, un-rushed time for exercise and prayer, and leftover time for extracurriculars (in my case, gardening, reading, and hanging out with my kids). This, of course, is the promise of every summer (exhibited in beer commercials). This, of course, is what escapes me every summer, mostly because I dedicate a cluster of days to recreational extracurriculars (primarily, vacations) , thereby forcing me to jam my remaining days with work. But behold, I think I see a stretch of such days looming before me. I have zero (count em, zero) commitments over the next three weekends and, although I have a huge pile of work at the office to attack, I don't perceive that I will have to spend more than, say, 45 hours at the office every week to handle it (50 at the most). It's a good feeling.
Yes, TDE reader, I hear your objection to the last blurg: it was too wordy. I could've merely said, "Summer vacations make the rest of my summer hectic, but things are looking up." But that wouldn't have been entirely accurate, plus it's helpful to break down what exactly is happening to create a life that doesn't feel like it's worth living, which is exactly how I feel when I'm scurried from one activity to another, like a silver ball in a pinball machine.
I once did a stay-cation of sorts. I signed out of the office for the week like an ordinary vacation. I then proceeded to show up at the office every day like normal, but when someone bothered me for X, Y, or Z, I politely informed them I wasn't there. Yes, yes: the other attorneys at the office and staff recognized the eccentricity of it without any offense, but I really did keep my distractions to a minimum and left by noon, leaving me to do whatever the rest of the day, which often brought me mozing back to the office in the evening to help a client with a time-sensitive matter, but becasue I was relaxed, without any stress. It was a splendid week. I probably ended up working about 30 hours that week, which led me to believe 30 hours is the perfect work week for a middle-aged man.
Random Blurb from the Notebooks: Virtue and wisdom, after all, are the opposites of arrogance and ignorance. Just as ignorance results in arrogance because a person is totally unaware of his lack of understanding, wisdom results in virtue because the wise person sees his inadequate understanding and thereby attains humility–the first of the virtues.
