Down Time
Well, my goodness! It’s been months since I have written a blog. At first, back in July, I fretted about losing my twice-a-month goal, and letting down my faithful readers.
What a summer it was, one of abundant (self-induced) chaos and disruption, on the heels of a fairly disruptive spring (also self-induced). Autumn? It’s been a little nuts, too.
Summer was the most challenging. By way of explanation: in June my office roof had to be removed, along with the roof over the little sitting area beside it known as the Cool Porch. To the sky. For two weeks. Mercifully, the weather was agreeable (well, except for that one morning Ben & I were on high ladders tarping things while a pop-up storm blew in...). Given the nature of the beast of construction, it took another four weeks for the joists, roofing, shingles, drywall hangers (oh, that drywall dust...), painters, carpet layers, gutter guys, et cetera.
The real chaos involved carrying 25 years-worth of stuff from there into the rest of the house. Books from the (many) shelves, a filing cabinet, the computer system, everything but the 110-year-old desk, which was carefully covered and worked around. The pictures on the walls, the knick-knacks on the windowsills. The counters. Everything. The Cool Porch, which had major surgery last year for unsustainable windows, also had to be emptied. Its new furniture nudged its way into the main house. Professionals came in to move the electronics cabinet, but the guts had to stay on the Porch in a “waterproof” (sort of) tote. Most nail-biting (also with professional help) was easing the 250-year-old grandfather clock into the house. I cobbled together a temporary office in the guest room, breathing a huge sigh of relief when the computer worked after the move. And when the workmen departed, taking their noise and dust and disruption with them, and my place was mercifully quiet again, there was process of moving all that stuff back into position, one armload at a time.
A long-standing policy I developed years ago is to be present during major work on any structure of mine. There are inevitable questions with a project like this, and I like to be part of the solution instead of finding out in the aftermath that a decision was made without me. I (mostly) stayed out of the way. Aside from some short weekend trips, I was home for an unprecedented two months. Imagine that! But I found that it was next to impossible to do anything creative.
Adding excitement for three weeks in July were the 45 goats who came and ate poison ivy, brambles, vines, and autumn olives -- which their goatherd said they consider to be "goat caviar" and which eliminated the need for herbicides on the property!
In the end, I pondered my stymied stutter-starts to be productive and how I had, finally, stopped fighting it to just go with the flow. This was a new feeling for me. It has been a big deal, this gift of giving myself permission to take some down time. Those who know me well know, yes, this has been a big deal.
This has led to a question I seem to get a lot these days: “are you retired?” My answer: “I...don’t know.” For most people, “retired” comes when you don’t have to answer to a boss’s expectations. There’s no more 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. There’s no longer a need to measure performance. But my good fortune has been that I’ve had the freedom to call my own schedule for decades. Avoiding the grind of a traditional work week has, indeed, often meant working nights and weekends. But it has also allowed me to craft my life so I can disappear, sometimes for weeks at a time, on various adventures.
Still, for forty-five years, since my first professional freelance article for the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, I have met deadlines and drummed up ideas in the face of some crazy life circumstances. At this point, I’m deeply grateful to no longer have to hustle after the next paying gig anymore. I’m past that. But if I’m not doing that, does this means I’m retired? I do not think so. If “retired” means pickleball and volunteering a lot, I’m just not there.
So, if not that, then...what? I have the same 24 hours as anyone else, but in this period of down time, there has been an odd air of unleashed abandon. I can wake up and get up when I want, stay up late if I want, stall out in the middle of the day and read a book. Go from one thing to the next without prethinking how to maximize the minutes of a chronically overbooked life. The urge to multitask and anticipate my next move all the time has evaporated.
Maybe the resistance to chronicling the utter absence of form or function these past few months stems, I think, from still having no idea of what will happen next. I do not have a plan. I cannot even make any promises. Down Time lately has become like the poppy fields in the Wizard of Oz. I Just. Want. To. Sleep. And yet....I know that this slothlike state entirely defies who I believe I am. And this: if nothing else, I remain fascinated by words, and smithing them. Good writing still excites me. It seems safe to say that stopping writing is not in the plan, not ever.
So here it is: the first Generally Write since June. Have you taken some time off lately? Try it. Down time is...fascinating. Possibly restorative. Certainly a new thing, for me. I thank you for your patience while I was gone.
