Part of the fun in being retired is that I get to decide when to take a break and it is now free from second thoughts about “What if <name of executive> has a freak out when I’m taking a break?” I realized that I’d been pretty focused for a bunch of weeks in a row on various projects and I needed to step back and get outside and look at some distance and give my brain a rest. So I have been… I’ve been reading some Chester Himes (recommended), getting back to my walks which had been interrupted by having contractors in the house every day, and even just taking a drive and looking at stuff on the rest of Cape Ann. Also, giving in to the urge to nap is also good… the cats are reaching an age where they’ll nap with me instead of just trying to pull my nose off…

I’ve been getting better at resting and recharging over the last three decades, I reached a bad spot in my twenties where after having an episode where I was sent home for yelling at a colleague in a build lab at three in the morning… I realized that I had gotten too wrapped up in work and was just teetering on the edge of burn out… Shortly after that I started taking longer and more restful vacations… one of the best was to a small island next to Tahiti called Moorea… very remote, very beautiful, and our accommodations were a hut over a reef… no clock, no computers, no air-conditioning, no TV… the first few days were hard and then we broke through and gave in to island time and pace and it was an amazing fifteen days… After that we tried to add something like that into our year as a time to just disconnect ( and islands for whatever reason are great for disconnecting ).

I’m not worried about finishing my projects, I honestly don’t care if I do or not… I probably will given my track record… I mostly worry about compulsively turning them into a job because that’s what I’m used to… Ok, back to my break, it’s Friday, never start anything new on a Friday…