Labor Day Labors
We all carry our own burdens, whether we want to or not. One of mine appears to be that I think too much. Please don’t shut down and assume that I am being arrogant and suggesting that I am smarter than other people, because I am not. I know my IQ and have for many years and I know I have a modicum of intelligence, but that many of you out there are, indeed, more intelligent than I am. But I am wired to spend much more than an average amount of my time thinking about stuff that many other people are smart enough not to bother thinking about or who actively reject thinking about. Not thinking can be one of the smartest things you can do at times since I feel that the act of overthinking is a very real phenomenon. I am reminded of Steve Martin in My Blue Heaven, who says that it’s not tipping that he believes in, its over-tipping. Well, like it or not, I am prone to over-thinking and that is an added labor in my life that I seem unable to avoid.
I awoke this morning with my CPAP declaring that I had slept an uninterrupted 7 hours and 15 minutes. Hooray! That alone makes this Labor Day a real holiday for me. Neither my shoulder nor my hip hurts, so this is a real red-letter day for me right from the git-go. I know that we are scheduled to go on a harbor cruise this evening with our guests, the Massicci’s of far-off Ithaca, New York and I know that they plan to go to the beach with my niece’s family in Carlsbad. Kim and I will stay back and follow our normal homebody routines since it is already a far more active week for us than normal and we (and I especially include Betty in that we) like to relax more and more these days. I was forced to recognize that lately when our friend Mike and I were discussing our planned February trip to Egypt and Jordan. First of all, that’s an aggressive travel plan not only because of where we are going (not exactly like a trip to Disneyland), but because it comes only five months after we will have finished out motorcycle trip over the Pyrenees and across the Camino de Santiago. No flies on us, right? But the Kensington Tour people asked Mike if we wanted a relaxed, moderate or aggressive tour. Mike immediately said he was sure none of wanted a relaxed tour and I suspect he would have personally opted for the aggressive, but it forced me to say that we preferred the moderate program. I know that we like some down-time while on vacation even if we are all suited-up for touristic battle and we are only over there for so long. So today we will hang back from the beach and yet prepare for the harbor cruise…maybe only a few flies on us…
I am a planner as anyone who knows me knows. So, my plan for the day is already thought out. I will use the time today to do one outdoor activity and one indoor activity. I will stomp around my back hillside to try to fix the two apparent breaks I have in the back hillside low-voltage lighting system. Pete and I talked it all through last night and even went to the transformer box with flashlights and fixed half of it (neither of us could completely understand why we were able to fix it or why it had broken, but be that as it may it got partially fixed nonetheless). I have two very specific fixes to attempt and I will do so with some degree of determination. I am totally capable of falling short on this, but not for lack of trying. Then I will come into the cool of the living room and review both of the lectures I have to give on Tuesday and Wednesday nights remembering that giving a total of five hours of lectures in one week is actually a lot. I feel very proud to be taking on two whole courses this semester because it actually is a lot of work and I will use a few hours today of PowerPoint review to build my confidence that I am fully prepared for the challenge. The balancing of physical and mental work in retirement seems to me to be an important aspect to be mastered and while there is no perfect recipe for everyone, I suspect everyone can tell when they get it wrong or when they get it right. This week will start to inform me of that for this Fall.
But while all of that requires a degree of planning, which I enjoy and which is hardly noteworthy by any mortal standards, that planning is not about over-thinking in my opinion. The act of planning is often undertaken by most people, but not everyone bothers to think about their planning as much as I seem to, and some might rightly say that I over-think my planning by doing things like writing about my planning just as I am now. That’s a little convoluted, but I think it still makes sense. Doing things like planning instinctively is one thing. Planning to plan and then reviewing the plan and then revising the plan and then talking about the plan and God-forbid writing about the plan might be construed to be over-thinking, don’t you think? I certainly over-think so.
This morning I have two examples to chastise myself about. The first is the story I wrote yesterday morning and that would have published tomorrow except that now I think I will publish this story tomorrow to keep the Labor Day theme fresh. That means I will push the story I wrote yesterday to Wednesday because it is suddenly less timely because I wrote about something that was happening yesterday in the world and got reported this morning as having happened in a very specific direction. That thing was the referendum being taken in Chile about a host of liberal rights that was up for consideration to be added to the constitution of Chile. Not to be a spoiler, but it didn’t pass and I had to put a rider on the story to explain why the way in which that is being handled is a good sign about democracy in Chile. You’ll see on Wednesday if you choose to read it. My point is that I wrote a story that got out ahead of the news and had to modify it for how the news unfolded. That is not awful, but it does show me that yesterday I was perhaps a bit over-thinking the world or at least the pace of the world and that my publishing schedule tethered me to earth in what is probably a good way as it turns out.
The other example is that I had some time today to read a few extra articles with a head full of good sleep, and one of them was about e-bikes and the perils and problems thereof. I am not an e-bike user since that would be a bit redundant for a suburban motorcyclist, but I have a relative who is. We saw him the other day and I was somewhat surprised by various aspects of the e-bike program. I do not want to get into the details too much other than to say that I chose to be a butt-in-ski (I know I use that word, but have never written it, so I hope you have pronounced that out). I wrote him and his wife a long email trying my best to share my 55 years of motorcycling experience into some form of cautionary tale about how to be safe while e-biking. I clearly did it because what I saw and learned from our brief e-bike encounter, concerned me and I felt I should say something. That required some serious over-thinking on my part. Giving unsolicited advice to a next-generation adult only loosely related to you is a risky proposition…especially about the perils of e-biking when you have braved the perils of motorcycling for so long. But I considered the risk worth taking since it felt like a labor of love on this Labor Day.