Looking all the way back to the job I began one week after college graduation, in early June of 1989, I could trace my work history by job title. Or by salary. By immediate supervisor. By office address. By length of tenure.
But yesterday it occurred to me I could also trace my work history by midday walks. I’ve always appreciated the benefits of a lunch hour spent outside in the fresh air, taking a little exercise. And each workplace setting comes with its own options for lunchtime strolls.
When I worked in Boston, I’d walk over to the Public Garden and circle the Frog Pond and the Boston Common during the noontime hour. I’d watch tourists riding the Swan Boats. I’d see well-dressed Beacon Hill aristocrats stepping along carefully, carrying their little purses and walking their little dogs. I’d see Bullfinch architecture on the skyline and Freedom Trail landmarks along the way.
When I worked in Cambridge, I walked along the Charles River, from the Esplanade down to the Mass Ave Bridge or sometimes only as far as the Hatch Shell, where the Boston Pops play on the Fourth of July. At that time I worked for a big company and a lot of my co-workers liked to go walking as well, so we’d head out together and talk about anything but what was waiting for us on our desks when we got back.
When I worked in Waltham, walking was not a popular midday activity in my company. In fact, I’m not sure I ever saw anyone venture outdoors except to get to their cars in the parking lot. We were situated in an office park on a highway exit, so the surroundings were not exactly inviting, but some of the office parks around us had relatively appealing landscaping, with lawns and manmade ponds, and I even found a cut-through to a little suburban neighborhood that backed on to one of the parking lots. It was a neighborhood nondescript enough that it could have been featured in a study about what went wrong in the design of American suburbs, and I doubt even the people who lived there went for many walks around the block. But it was better than sitting in a windowless break room.
Using the standard of lunchtime walks as a framework, though, it’s obvious to me that I’ve figuratively won the lottery at this point. I’m self-employed and get to write all day; better still, I’m at home, where my so-called office – which is actually our kitchen alcove – looks into the woods. A trail from the yard leads into the state park, with over one thousand acres of trails.
So on days like yesterday, which was an absolutely perfect New England fall day, with cool dry air, an occasional gust of wind, and yellow leaves shimmering in the sunlight, my lunchtime walk consists of grabbing the leash, calling the dog, slipping a trail map into my jacket pocket and heading out.
And once I’m in the woods, deadlines and quotes and fact-checking don’t seem to matter so much. I can enjoy the scent of the forest, the rocks and pine needles and tree roots underfoot, the rush of water from the brooks that lace through the woods. The setting is far better than any of my previous office situations, but the joy of getting out in the middle of the day is the same.
Ultimately, that’s always been the purpose of lunchtime walks: to stop thinking for a little while about the work left behind. The woods, as Robert Frost observed, are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises – and deadlines -- to keep. Still, it’s inspiring to know that as long as I keep up with my work, I can slip out to the woods again at lunchtime tomorrow.
Showing posts with label self-employed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-employed. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Playing hooky at the beach
It was the kind of day I used to dream of when I worked in a full-time corporate role: a hot summer day when instead of dressing up and heading to the office just as the cool of the morning dissipated into hazy humidity, I instead made sandwiches, packed water bottles, rummaged for sunscreen, and loaded them all into the beach bag.
Playing hooky is a relative term when you’re self-employed. I didn’t have to offer excuses (or fibs) to any manager or supervisor; I just had to convince myself that giving up my usual work hours in favor of getting an early start to the shore wouldn’t result in my missing all my deadlines and losing all my contracts for this week.
Over the past couple of summers, ever since I became a full-fledged self-employed freelance writer, the kids and I have developed a schedule that works for all of us when they’re on vacation. I generally sit down at my desk by nine and work steadily until noon; then we have lunch, and after lunch we do something recreational together. Although that scheme allows for only half the daily work hours that I log during the school year, it seems to work, in part because I have less administrivia related to volunteer work at the kids’ school during the summer, which tends to eat up some of my writing time during the rest of the year, and in part because I don’t really mind having to fill in with another hour or two of work in the evening, since it’s the tradeoff for so much flexibility.
But yesterday I didn’t even turn on my computer in the morning: I just packed up our beach gear and climbed into my friend Leigh’s car, while Tim and Holly greeted Leigh’s two boys and one of their friends and settled in amongst the back seats. If the ninety-degree heat and humidity wasn’t incentive enough to make it a beach day, the fact that someone else was willing to drive – and had enough passenger space for all of us – certainly sealed the deal.
It was a wonderful day to be at the beach: hot and sunny but not particularly crowded. For hours, we swam, walked along the shoreline, and basked in the sun (slathered in sunscreen, of course). After we returned home, I let the kids cool off indoors with some computer and video games while I filed the article I should have worked on that morning.
Having this kind of flexibility is not something I’ll ever take for granted; I love being able to rearrange my work schedule so that I can play hooky once in a while but still meet all my deadlines on time. I truly believe that it’s good to practice this kind of spontaneity once in a while. When I was in elementary school, my mother let my sisters and me each miss one day of school each year for a special excursion: a trip into the city for lunch and some kind of performance, most often. My father did the same during the summer, when the stakes weren’t the same – he didn’t have work and we didn’t have school – but there was still the sense of escape: during our yearly vacations, he would spend one day alone with each of us doing something special like fishing, biking or horseback riding.
My kids didn’t seem particularly impressed that I took a whole day off from work to go to the beach; they respect my work schedule but don’t necessarily see it as particularly important. But I hope in some way, the freedom we observed yesterday made an impact on them. I’m so lucky to be able to do this, and it’s important to take advantage of the opportunity when it arises. Having plenty of work to do is a good thing, far better than being under-employed. But finding ways to step away from it once in a while is uniquely rewarding as well, especially on a perfect beach day like yesterday.
Playing hooky is a relative term when you’re self-employed. I didn’t have to offer excuses (or fibs) to any manager or supervisor; I just had to convince myself that giving up my usual work hours in favor of getting an early start to the shore wouldn’t result in my missing all my deadlines and losing all my contracts for this week.
Over the past couple of summers, ever since I became a full-fledged self-employed freelance writer, the kids and I have developed a schedule that works for all of us when they’re on vacation. I generally sit down at my desk by nine and work steadily until noon; then we have lunch, and after lunch we do something recreational together. Although that scheme allows for only half the daily work hours that I log during the school year, it seems to work, in part because I have less administrivia related to volunteer work at the kids’ school during the summer, which tends to eat up some of my writing time during the rest of the year, and in part because I don’t really mind having to fill in with another hour or two of work in the evening, since it’s the tradeoff for so much flexibility.
But yesterday I didn’t even turn on my computer in the morning: I just packed up our beach gear and climbed into my friend Leigh’s car, while Tim and Holly greeted Leigh’s two boys and one of their friends and settled in amongst the back seats. If the ninety-degree heat and humidity wasn’t incentive enough to make it a beach day, the fact that someone else was willing to drive – and had enough passenger space for all of us – certainly sealed the deal.
It was a wonderful day to be at the beach: hot and sunny but not particularly crowded. For hours, we swam, walked along the shoreline, and basked in the sun (slathered in sunscreen, of course). After we returned home, I let the kids cool off indoors with some computer and video games while I filed the article I should have worked on that morning.
Having this kind of flexibility is not something I’ll ever take for granted; I love being able to rearrange my work schedule so that I can play hooky once in a while but still meet all my deadlines on time. I truly believe that it’s good to practice this kind of spontaneity once in a while. When I was in elementary school, my mother let my sisters and me each miss one day of school each year for a special excursion: a trip into the city for lunch and some kind of performance, most often. My father did the same during the summer, when the stakes weren’t the same – he didn’t have work and we didn’t have school – but there was still the sense of escape: during our yearly vacations, he would spend one day alone with each of us doing something special like fishing, biking or horseback riding.
My kids didn’t seem particularly impressed that I took a whole day off from work to go to the beach; they respect my work schedule but don’t necessarily see it as particularly important. But I hope in some way, the freedom we observed yesterday made an impact on them. I’m so lucky to be able to do this, and it’s important to take advantage of the opportunity when it arises. Having plenty of work to do is a good thing, far better than being under-employed. But finding ways to step away from it once in a while is uniquely rewarding as well, especially on a perfect beach day like yesterday.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Morning party
I am lucky that most people who throw large annual parties don’t bother to cull their guest lists from year to year or I probably wouldn’t have been invited to yesterday’s midmorning brunch given by my friends Liz and Peg. It was the third or fourth time they’d invited me, but it was the first time I’d actually managed to be there.
Yes, I have plenty of work to do this week, and plenty of assignments to wrap up as well as a few to start, and truth be told, I was a little embarrassed to be going to a party in the middle of the workday. It just sounded so very decadent. I could be meeting deadlines; why was I chatting and sipping coffee? That’s not something working people do.
On the other hand, why bother to be self-employed if it doesn’t mean a couple of times a year you can do something you never used to do in the corporate world: just wander across town on an ordinary Wednesday morning for a party?
Peg’s house was brimming over with other party-goers: forty or fifty in all, probably. Several years ago, if I happened to drive past an event like this, I would have wondered about the attendees. Really, I would have thought to myself, in this day and age, how can fifty Carlisle women be free in the middle of a weekday morning to stand around talking?
But I knew most of the women there, and now it doesn’t seem so unusual to me, although I certainly concede we are an exceptionally fortunate group. Some of the women who were there don’t currently have paid jobs, but many do. Some, like me, are self-employed and set their own hours and see something like this party as a special indulgence, a reason to leave the home office for an hour or two. Others work part-time. And some are business owners or senior managers who, quite frankly, can come and go from their offices without feeling obligated to offer explanations to anyone.
It was the kind of event I could have very easily persuaded myself to skip. I enjoy my solitary work day. I like the focus and intensity of being by myself all day concentrating on my writing projects. Going out to socialize takes effort.
But on this June morning, it was an effort I felt like making. Among the forty or fifty guests, I knew most of them, though there were some I hadn’t seen in over a year, and it was great to catch up. Ingrid had been living in Switzerland for the past couple of years, and I was interested to hear how that had worked out for her family; Lisa and I commiserated on our sons’ busy spring baseball schedule; Peg updated me on volunteer recruitment for next fall’s Spaghetti Supper; Liz and I fell into a conversation about what it’s like to visit your childhood home once your family no longer lives there. I met a couple of people for the first time as well, though I knew their names and they knew mine; that’s what small-town life is like.
And as decadent as the plan may sound, we did a little bit of good for the world as well, and for ourselves. Peg and Liz stated on the invitation that the party would include a canned food drive and put out boxes into which people could deposit food contributions that will later be brought to a distribution center, and guests were also encouraged to bring a second-hand book wrapped in brown paper (with a one-word description written on the paper) to trade.
It would have been easy to stay home, but I was so glad I went. It made my day feel richer for sharing it with a wider community than is the norm on a work day. My creativity and productivity improved when I got back to my desk, and it wasn’t even noon yet. It’s just good some days to get out and be with other people, and I was lucky yesterday to have the chance to do just that.
Yes, I have plenty of work to do this week, and plenty of assignments to wrap up as well as a few to start, and truth be told, I was a little embarrassed to be going to a party in the middle of the workday. It just sounded so very decadent. I could be meeting deadlines; why was I chatting and sipping coffee? That’s not something working people do.
On the other hand, why bother to be self-employed if it doesn’t mean a couple of times a year you can do something you never used to do in the corporate world: just wander across town on an ordinary Wednesday morning for a party?
Peg’s house was brimming over with other party-goers: forty or fifty in all, probably. Several years ago, if I happened to drive past an event like this, I would have wondered about the attendees. Really, I would have thought to myself, in this day and age, how can fifty Carlisle women be free in the middle of a weekday morning to stand around talking?
But I knew most of the women there, and now it doesn’t seem so unusual to me, although I certainly concede we are an exceptionally fortunate group. Some of the women who were there don’t currently have paid jobs, but many do. Some, like me, are self-employed and set their own hours and see something like this party as a special indulgence, a reason to leave the home office for an hour or two. Others work part-time. And some are business owners or senior managers who, quite frankly, can come and go from their offices without feeling obligated to offer explanations to anyone.
It was the kind of event I could have very easily persuaded myself to skip. I enjoy my solitary work day. I like the focus and intensity of being by myself all day concentrating on my writing projects. Going out to socialize takes effort.
But on this June morning, it was an effort I felt like making. Among the forty or fifty guests, I knew most of them, though there were some I hadn’t seen in over a year, and it was great to catch up. Ingrid had been living in Switzerland for the past couple of years, and I was interested to hear how that had worked out for her family; Lisa and I commiserated on our sons’ busy spring baseball schedule; Peg updated me on volunteer recruitment for next fall’s Spaghetti Supper; Liz and I fell into a conversation about what it’s like to visit your childhood home once your family no longer lives there. I met a couple of people for the first time as well, though I knew their names and they knew mine; that’s what small-town life is like.
And as decadent as the plan may sound, we did a little bit of good for the world as well, and for ourselves. Peg and Liz stated on the invitation that the party would include a canned food drive and put out boxes into which people could deposit food contributions that will later be brought to a distribution center, and guests were also encouraged to bring a second-hand book wrapped in brown paper (with a one-word description written on the paper) to trade.
It would have been easy to stay home, but I was so glad I went. It made my day feel richer for sharing it with a wider community than is the norm on a work day. My creativity and productivity improved when I got back to my desk, and it wasn’t even noon yet. It’s just good some days to get out and be with other people, and I was lucky yesterday to have the chance to do just that.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Workday inertia
Inertia is an amazingly powerful force, I’ve come to realize. Especially on me.
And more so now than ever, it seems. These days, unlike when the kids were really little and I was home with them, or the years following that when I was working in an office full-time, I spend my work days at home, at my kitchen table, writing. For six hours at a time. It’s the solitude and uninterrupted writing time I’ve craved for years, and now that I have it, I don’t care what the assignment is – I can be working on an article for the Globe, or writing about varicose veins for my client who runs a medical website, or studying up on football stats for the next segment I need to draft for my client who is compiling a book about pro football, or revising my own manuscript-in-progress yet again – it doesn’t matter what the topic, I’m grateful just to have the time to write.
Sometimes a little too grateful. I find it very hard to make myself get up and do anything else.
I know that mental stimulation is important during the work day even when I’m on deadline. I just have trouble sometimes overcoming the urge to just stay where I am and keep writing.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine here in town hosted a midmorning gathering. I was in the middle of a writing assignment, and it started to rain hard. “I should go to this get-together, but it’s so tempting to just stay put,” I said to a client who called to discuss an upcoming project. Since Carlisle is almost entirely a driving town rather than a walking town, there’s always the additional excuse that staying home is more environmentally sound than going anywhere.
“Just go. You’ll be glad you made the effort,” she replied.
I was puzzled. The client hardly knows me; she doesn’t know the host of the party or any of the other guests who would be there; and she wasn’t even close enough geographically to see how hard it was raining. Why was she so sure I should go?
But then I thought about the note I’d have to write apologizing if I didn’t show up, and how sheepish I’d feel next time I saw the host. And so I reminded myself it was less than a ten-minute drive to the party; I could stay for 40 minutes and not be away from my desk for more than an hour total.
Needless to say, it was the right decision. The house was full of cheerful, welcoming faces, hot coffee and fragrant baked goods. I caught up with friends I hadn’t seen since before summer vacation. I traded opinions on local issues and heard updates on the construction project at our school that I should have known about from the newspaper but hadn’t taken the time to follow closely.
Best of all, I didn’t have to write a sheepish apology attempting to excuse my absence.
Yesterday it wasn’t a social occasion that pulled me away from my desk but an unexpected offer from my father to drive me thirty minutes to the repair shop where my car was being fixed. I could have just waited until the end of the day and gotten a ride from Rick, as I’d planned to do. As before, the lure of sitting at my computer writing was almost irresistible.
But so was the chance to have a few minutes to visit alone with my father, and doing that particular drive in the midafternoon was a much better idea than waiting for rush hour. And so I shut down my computer and climbed into his car.
We had a great visit. Not for any particular reason – we talked about an issue related to town government, recent segments we’d heard on NPR, nothing weighty – but it was just good to get away from the silence of my workday and spend a little undistracted time with my father. On the way back, having picked up my car and said goodbye to him, I even prolonged the trip with a stop at the supermarket, taking advantage of the midafternoon lull there to enjoy empty aisles and no lines.
It’s good to be able to focus on work. I’m really grateful that my workday affords me such solitude, but I’m also glad that once in a while something compels me to overcome my inertia. Thoreau wrote that he had one chair for solitude, two for company, and three for society. It’s a useful image to keep in mind. The work day shouldn’t be all about that one chair. Even Thoreau, who moved to a cabin in the woods to live deliberately and in relative solitude, knew that once in a while he should really pull out those two other chairs.
And more so now than ever, it seems. These days, unlike when the kids were really little and I was home with them, or the years following that when I was working in an office full-time, I spend my work days at home, at my kitchen table, writing. For six hours at a time. It’s the solitude and uninterrupted writing time I’ve craved for years, and now that I have it, I don’t care what the assignment is – I can be working on an article for the Globe, or writing about varicose veins for my client who runs a medical website, or studying up on football stats for the next segment I need to draft for my client who is compiling a book about pro football, or revising my own manuscript-in-progress yet again – it doesn’t matter what the topic, I’m grateful just to have the time to write.
Sometimes a little too grateful. I find it very hard to make myself get up and do anything else.
I know that mental stimulation is important during the work day even when I’m on deadline. I just have trouble sometimes overcoming the urge to just stay where I am and keep writing.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine here in town hosted a midmorning gathering. I was in the middle of a writing assignment, and it started to rain hard. “I should go to this get-together, but it’s so tempting to just stay put,” I said to a client who called to discuss an upcoming project. Since Carlisle is almost entirely a driving town rather than a walking town, there’s always the additional excuse that staying home is more environmentally sound than going anywhere.
“Just go. You’ll be glad you made the effort,” she replied.
I was puzzled. The client hardly knows me; she doesn’t know the host of the party or any of the other guests who would be there; and she wasn’t even close enough geographically to see how hard it was raining. Why was she so sure I should go?
But then I thought about the note I’d have to write apologizing if I didn’t show up, and how sheepish I’d feel next time I saw the host. And so I reminded myself it was less than a ten-minute drive to the party; I could stay for 40 minutes and not be away from my desk for more than an hour total.
Needless to say, it was the right decision. The house was full of cheerful, welcoming faces, hot coffee and fragrant baked goods. I caught up with friends I hadn’t seen since before summer vacation. I traded opinions on local issues and heard updates on the construction project at our school that I should have known about from the newspaper but hadn’t taken the time to follow closely.
Best of all, I didn’t have to write a sheepish apology attempting to excuse my absence.
Yesterday it wasn’t a social occasion that pulled me away from my desk but an unexpected offer from my father to drive me thirty minutes to the repair shop where my car was being fixed. I could have just waited until the end of the day and gotten a ride from Rick, as I’d planned to do. As before, the lure of sitting at my computer writing was almost irresistible.
But so was the chance to have a few minutes to visit alone with my father, and doing that particular drive in the midafternoon was a much better idea than waiting for rush hour. And so I shut down my computer and climbed into his car.
We had a great visit. Not for any particular reason – we talked about an issue related to town government, recent segments we’d heard on NPR, nothing weighty – but it was just good to get away from the silence of my workday and spend a little undistracted time with my father. On the way back, having picked up my car and said goodbye to him, I even prolonged the trip with a stop at the supermarket, taking advantage of the midafternoon lull there to enjoy empty aisles and no lines.
It’s good to be able to focus on work. I’m really grateful that my workday affords me such solitude, but I’m also glad that once in a while something compels me to overcome my inertia. Thoreau wrote that he had one chair for solitude, two for company, and three for society. It’s a useful image to keep in mind. The work day shouldn’t be all about that one chair. Even Thoreau, who moved to a cabin in the woods to live deliberately and in relative solitude, knew that once in a while he should really pull out those two other chairs.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Can't walk away from work -- and wouldn't want to
I’m finding it increasingly difficult these days to separate work time from non-work time. When I was employed by a big company and went to an office for eight hours a day, it was easy. At 5 PM, or 5:20 PM, or sometimes even 6 or later – but in any case, at a particular time – I clicked on the “log out” icon, snapped off my monitor, picked up my briefcase and went home, and work was over for the day. Sure, sometimes I had more work to do at night or over the weekend. But even then, it had distinct parameters. I knew what tasks or projects I needed to finish – one article to revise for the company newsletter; one memo from the CEO to proofread – and once I was done with that task, I could again walk away from my work.
Now, it’s different. I’m self-employed, but this is more about deadlines than money. I always have so many different projects open at once, just as I always have so many windows on my computer open at once. And a lot of times, it’s the communication with other players on the project that keeps me from disconnecting. If I have two hours of work on an article to do, I can sit down and do it and be done, but so often I’m waiting for an answer from an editor, or waiting for a story subject to get back to me about a photo opportunity.
Right now it’s Friday night, but I don’t feel done for the week at all. I’m writing a newspaper piece about a non-profit that just produced a cookbook, and I’m waiting for quotes from two of the volunteers who helped with the project. I’m also working on a story about a group of dads who formed an offshoot of the PTA in their town, and I’m waiting for the dads to agree on a time and place to have the photographer take their picture. Meanwhile, the municipal management consultant I work for needs revisions on a survey that is supposed to be distributed early next week, and I still have to finish drafting minutes from the September meeting for the volunteer board for which I serve as clerk.
But let me clarify that I realize I’m no busier than anyone else with a normal freelance workload, and I’m a lot less busy than plenty of people. And actually, I like the steady continuous flow of my work life. When I worked 9 to 5 and snapped my briefcase shut at the end of the day, it was work I disliked and had no interest in thinking about off hours. These days, I'm so engaged with my work that I wouldn’t want to walk away from it on the weekends if I could. For example, I’ve made a personal commitment to try to blog five days a week and take weekends off, but last Saturday I enjoyed my run so much and had so many thoughts about it that I did a Saturday blog entry anyway. And rather than thinking “I can never get away from writing,” I felt lucky that I love writing so much and that I have so many opportunities to do it.
And the same is true this weekend. I look forward to continuing the cookbook story and getting started on the dads’ PTA article. It will feel good to get the meeting minutes completed, and I’ll be relieved to send off the municipal management survey. And while I’m doing all of those things, I’ll be generating new ideas and pursuing new assignments. Writing is not a 9-to-5 job; it’s something I’m thinking about all the time. I know a lot of other professions are like that as well. But I just feel so fortunate that my work life and leisure time don’t really need to be separated out in my mind, that they blur together as inextricable components of the life I’m happy to be leading.
Now, it’s different. I’m self-employed, but this is more about deadlines than money. I always have so many different projects open at once, just as I always have so many windows on my computer open at once. And a lot of times, it’s the communication with other players on the project that keeps me from disconnecting. If I have two hours of work on an article to do, I can sit down and do it and be done, but so often I’m waiting for an answer from an editor, or waiting for a story subject to get back to me about a photo opportunity.
Right now it’s Friday night, but I don’t feel done for the week at all. I’m writing a newspaper piece about a non-profit that just produced a cookbook, and I’m waiting for quotes from two of the volunteers who helped with the project. I’m also working on a story about a group of dads who formed an offshoot of the PTA in their town, and I’m waiting for the dads to agree on a time and place to have the photographer take their picture. Meanwhile, the municipal management consultant I work for needs revisions on a survey that is supposed to be distributed early next week, and I still have to finish drafting minutes from the September meeting for the volunteer board for which I serve as clerk.
But let me clarify that I realize I’m no busier than anyone else with a normal freelance workload, and I’m a lot less busy than plenty of people. And actually, I like the steady continuous flow of my work life. When I worked 9 to 5 and snapped my briefcase shut at the end of the day, it was work I disliked and had no interest in thinking about off hours. These days, I'm so engaged with my work that I wouldn’t want to walk away from it on the weekends if I could. For example, I’ve made a personal commitment to try to blog five days a week and take weekends off, but last Saturday I enjoyed my run so much and had so many thoughts about it that I did a Saturday blog entry anyway. And rather than thinking “I can never get away from writing,” I felt lucky that I love writing so much and that I have so many opportunities to do it.
And the same is true this weekend. I look forward to continuing the cookbook story and getting started on the dads’ PTA article. It will feel good to get the meeting minutes completed, and I’ll be relieved to send off the municipal management survey. And while I’m doing all of those things, I’ll be generating new ideas and pursuing new assignments. Writing is not a 9-to-5 job; it’s something I’m thinking about all the time. I know a lot of other professions are like that as well. But I just feel so fortunate that my work life and leisure time don’t really need to be separated out in my mind, that they blur together as inextricable components of the life I’m happy to be leading.
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