Six Months to Live

I read an alarmist article in The New York Times yesterday about how blogging is bad for your health. Though I approached it with a wary eye, I raced to the finish to make certain I wasn’t in the category of blogger waiting in line for the reaper.

It’s not that I really had an inkling that blogging would kill me, but that my lifestyle would; which I think was the crux of this author’s misplaced thesis. He was trying to get to the point that high strung people can have a tendency to work themselves to death, and that happens to include people who blog for a living. His argument was mistaking correlation with causation. But that’s neither here nor there…the point is: chasing goals at the expense of a balanced life (whether you are a blogger, an attorney, or a prairie dog farmer) is not good for your well-being.

In what I would consider my formative work years, I had a mentor who would often encourage me to keep my eyes on the prize and proclaim, “You’ll sleep in six months!” Meaning, when I complained of being tired, she reminded me of my deadlines and the day I could finally rest and enjoy the fruits of my labors as a reward. Only six months never, ever came. I’m still waiting. Like waiting for a signal from a lover that you think you’ve finally won over, each time you get a call, a knock on the door, you think your dozen roses has arrived.

So, I’ve been working hard, harder still, and wondering why I'm so tired all the time. All my goals I set out six months more, the problem is, I’ve never stopped to enjoy myself, to sit back and say, “Now that’s a job well done.” With each accomplishment I’ve only perceived marginal success and said, “Well, that’s done…what now?” My frenzy to finish lines all over my life has led me to seek the high of exertion, not the bliss of recovery. I have been chasing dreams, and fantasies of better days, which have limited usefulness if you never complete them by enjoying them.

I have a suspicion that you must become the kind of person who can appreciate themselves, their accomplishments and stop fantasizing that constant work will get you anywhere faster or happier.

In my own experience, it’s led to a world of regret. I know that my relationship with my father is too profound for splitting hairs like, “Well, he missed my high school choir concerts, so it’s okay that I went to work while he had his chemo treatments.” But I do it. Silently in the back of my mind I do it. And I regret it. Big regret. My father lived and worked hard too, I always envied his ability to work, concentrate, achieve. And perhaps he's so much a part of me that it led to me distancing myself during times of tragedy and diving into work when life got tough. This is a reaction many people have. But. I regret it. And perhaps he regretted missing those concerts.

There is an interesting rule of propriety that I recently learned. A manner’s expert said that when you’ve committed a faux pas or major gaffe, the appropriate course of action is to briefly acknowledge and apologize for it, then move on as if everything is normal. Continuing to address your problem with the person you’ve offended will only cause them to feel the need to further comfort you for your mistake, thereby shifting the burden of your impropriety onto them. This is terribly bad taste, she indicates. She accurately points out that everyone feels better when they can just move on with things.

I see a parallel with regret. No one truly sets out to do their worst, that's why we call things "mistakes." And by recognizing where we’ve f-ed up along the way, we can apologize to people or to the Gods, and then set out to correct our life's course. I can sit around and continue to ruminate on my bad choices, but it does my father’s memory a disservice. The appropriate thing is to recognize my mistakes, learn from them, and change. No one wants to hear me apologize and return to business as usual. So, I choose change. Painful, life-renewing change. That’s all we have to live for. My six months is coming. And I mean it this time.