I feel better, and I don't know why

This week was supposed to be a week for big things. Without the distraction of work, I was going to sit down tonight and rattle off a long and impressive list of accomplishments.

I was going to start a Self-Improvement Plan. You know, eat less, exercise more, be generally more organized and more disciplined.

I did actually do a small part of that: I haven't had a sugared soda in five days. This is a big, big step for me; I love the soda, love the CO2 bubbling in my mouth, love the sugar dissolving my teeth. Love everything about it, except the gut that those 150-calorie-per-serving delights have left me with. I have a refrigerator full now of various diet sodas. The goal is to wean myself off of soda entirely. A few weeks of repulsive diet sodas ought to do the trick. We'll see. I've tried this a few times before, and have not been successful in the least. I now understand how hard it must be for a dedicated smoker to quit smoking.

As for the other parts of the SIP: Nothing. Still ate crap, in copious amounts; exercised not at all. But I really did think about it ...

We began painting the exterior of our house during Thanksgiving weekend. Of 2004. We were going to finish this week.

Didn't happen. Too damn hot. And even if it had been 72 with no humidity, well, it still probably wouldn't have happened.

I was going to think about work not at all.

... until the phone rang Wednesday. Small problem, easily resolved. Then Thursday. Bigger problem, but also solved in one call. Then Friday. Real big problem. Had to intervene. Multiple calls, incoming and outgoing. So much for vacation. At least I was able to handle it all remotely; back in the newspaper days, I would not have been able to avoid dropping everything and going into the office for an issue of that magnitude.

I didn't go to the high school reunion.

Now I kind of wish I had. The committee just sent an e-mail a few hours ago with a link to the pictures (technology rules!) I was stunned at the number of people I didn't recognize at first or second or third or fourth glance. Where the hell did all those 38-year-old Realtors and teachers come from? I saw about 70 faces in the pictures, and was able to get solid ID's on about 15 of them -- and at least five of those I could only recognize because I could read their name tags. As Joe Walsh sang, everybody's so different, and I haven't changed.

Yeah, right.

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I certainly wasn't bored this week. I did get to see the wonder of the Young Daughter becoming a first-class swimmer. I did spend a lot of time just hanging out with The Wife, and she in turn was able to catch a little bit of the break from some of her routine. I read a couple of Bill Bryson books. I had a great motorcycle ride last Saturday.

But other than that, I accomplished nothing in the last week. I crossed nothing off my to-do list. And I'm OK with that. I needed to waste a few days. I've spent a pretty long stretch trying to cram 1.6 days into every one day. I think I was owed a few. We're even now.

Just sit down and write

My life doesn't really allow much time for calm reflection. As I write this, I'm in an almost-empty house. It's basically pretty quiet, except for the two 5-year-old girls screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. Well, actually, it's just the Young Daughter who's screaming. She does that a lot. That's how she earned the nickname Diva of Decibels. The other little girl, YD's best friend, generally gets her points across more quietly.

The rest of the group is out at a local water park. YD and I aren't much into water parks, so we stayed home.

I'm on "vacation" this week. It's my first extended time off since last year's family trip to Washington, D.C. It comes at the end of a(nother) marathon travel stretch, the kind of travel I thought I was going to be able to avoid after having been promoted. The deal was that, rather than project trips lasting 5-8 days, I'd be doing support-type stuff and management schmoozes lasting a day or two each. That's basically true. However, I just did five of them in the last three weeks.

My 20-year high school reunion will be held this weekend in Anytown. I won't be there. A small part of me wishes I was going; I'd love to renew some of those connections and hear what these people are up to. But that small part has been drowned out by the larger part, the part that doesn't want to see the interior of another aircraft for a good long time. I'm tired of talking to my wife and kids on the phone.

I'm still taking the week off. There's a garage to clean, walls to paint, kids to watch. It's nice to prioritize those sorts of things above work, for a little while.

I've been thinking a lot about writing. I've been thinking I just need to sit down and tap keys for a while, just to see what comes out. I've certainly had some interesting experiences the last few weeks, the kind that in years recently past I would have chronicled almost immediately.

In fact, I just spent the last 20 minutes chronicling one of them before giving it the Click-Drag-Delete treatment. After writing it all down, I decided it just wasn't that interesting.

Not all that long ago, I had a voice in this forum. I can go through the archives and see that time was when I could sit down and construct a series of coherent sentences. I've learned many things in the last two years: How to install and manipulate a database, how to manage an enterprise-wide software installation project, how to get a flight on another airline when my originally scheduled flight is hopelessly delayed, how to read and speak rudimentary Danish and French.

Somewhere along the way, however, I seem to have forgotten how to appreciate the things going on around me. That's a skill I need to regain.

Data transfer interrupted

I am reachable, by one medium or another, pretty much 24 hours a day, every day. The only time that I am completely out of pocket is during the one or two hours that I am on an airplane going somewhere.

Being constantly available, of course, does not mean that I am providing better service. It just means that I can half-ass more stuff. It means that I can be in a meeting while driving a rental car from a customer site to an airport. It means that, while a customer is paying some absurd sum for me to be on site, I can simultaneously be helping two other customers who are not paying for the privilege.

This is a true story, and yeah, it's a little gross, but it's an illustration of what American business has become: Yesterday, I was on the phone with a customer and answering an e-mail ... in the bathroom. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

And don't think that I don't know where to find the "Ignore" button on my phone. There are plenty of unanswered items in my Inbox. At some point, I do have to sleep. At some point, I'm with my family, and that means With My Family. At some point, the sign has to turn around to "Closed." But every one of those Ignored calls and unanswered e-mails is still a tiny little failure.

One thing that makes my job extremely complicated is that the European co-workers on whom I depend heavily have a minimum of five weeks of vacation. Over there, it's acceptable to basically accomplish nothing in June, July and August. Over here, it's not acceptable to be unavailable while you're in the john.

I'm not complaining. I have a family which is very well-provided for. My roof covers a large number of square feet. The bills are paid and times are largely good.

But I know in some way, I'm paying for all this prosperity. And I also know I'm not the only one. This is the way We live. I just wonder what the end result really is.

As the fog descends ...

What would be fun, really, is to sit here and write while I'm at the complete edge of exhaustion, just to see what would happen. I've been in constant motion since last Wednesday: fly, drive 2 hours, meeting, drive 2 hours, fly ... one-day weekend lull ... fly, drive an hour and a half, meeting, drive an hour and a half, fly, get another rental car, hey! why is there a traffic jam in downtown Boston at 11:30 at night? lost in Boston, find freeway, drive an hour and a half, meeting, and eeew, that was why there was a traffic jam in downtown Boston.

So I'm in New Hampshire right now, with another day of meeting, fly, drive in front of me. And yeah, with the downtown Boston tunnels closed, it's going to be a bitch getting into Logan. Tomorrow's flight goes to North Carolina, where thankfully the meeting will be held in the same city in which we're landing. Then, fly and drive home Friday night. Weekend lull, then off to Southern California next week. Fly, drive an hour, two days of meetings, drive an hour, fly.

Then, a week of vacation. No plans, just vacation. The plan does not include moving eight miles a minute, as Seger once sang.

So writing all that was a long way of saying no, I'm not going to go to the reunion. That would be another three days of flying and driving, and I'm just not up for it. I can come up with more reasons to not go than reasons to go.

The fog is coming faster, the eyelids are getting heavy, the thoughts are coming both fast and slow at the same time. It's like the gears are turning without any actual power, the perpetual-motion brain that is spinning 7,600 rpm on the way to nowhere. I'm pretty sure I've forgotten why I'm in New Hampshire, and why I'm going to North Carolina. I'm just here, typing, not even in full control of the text I'm currently entering. I wonder how much longer I can do this.

Ken Lay, 1942-2006

Another thief bites the dust, and far too soon ... I really wanted to see that bastard suffer as an old, formerly rich man in prison for a while. Too bad Enron pensioners can't be made beneficiaries of his life insurance policy.

Resetting

Technical difficulties. Testing only.

Four days in Paradise

It's been a helluva fun weekend. No details are really necessary ... it's just been a wonderful string of perfect days. Such a string deserves to be acknowledged.