I’ve always considered myself an intellectual.

Even as a kid, I preferred books, ideas, and adult conversations over tinkering with an erector set.  As I got older, I ignored engines, tools, or anything that required grease. If a machine broke, my thoughtful contribution was to make suggestions about who should fix it, other than me

In junior high school, I took a typing class.

At the time, typing was not considered an activity for future intellectuals. Typing was for future secretaries and clerks. While I was learning that my left index finger was responsible for the letter F, the smart kids were studying science, literature, and foreign languages.

Today, by contrast, if you can’t use a keyboard, you are essentially a Victorian.

In high school I enrolled in a bookkeeping class.  Again, this was a practical class, filled with students who did not plan to attend college.  The number of my “intellectual” friends in that class?  Zero.

Nobody bragged about being good at bookkeeping.  No one said, “My dream is to spend my life chasing receipts and reconciling checking accounts.  But I took the class for a practical reason. I wanted to keep track of my own money.

In my late twenties I started a business.  That’s when numbers became more than just a personal passion.  I learned that numbers have distinct personalities.

Revenue is optimistic.

Expenses are inventive.

Forecasts are fiction.

And taxes always seem to know exactly when you’re feeling financially comfortable.

Over the years, my love of numbers helped me buy properties, run businesses, publish books, and support causes I cared about.

Looking back, I realize, a typing class taught me how to communicate.

A bookkeeping class taught me not just how to survive, but to thrive.

And life taught me that the courses that might seem to be off your beaten path are often the most important in preparing you for your very best future.

But if someone had told the fumbling thirteen-year-old intellectual in that typing class filled with future secretaries and clerks that he would someday become a very successful CPA, he would have typed a brief, but thoughtful objection.

Very slowly.  And with many misspelled words.

Alan

This morning, as usual, I woke up and checked my calendar.

The page for today was blank.

I’ve written before about how an empty calendar previously caused me to feel a twinge of sadness. But today I felt relief.

Because today I had no appointments.

No meetings.

No lunch plans.

No conference calls.

No doctors.

No dentists.

No people wanting a few minutes of my time, which always seems to take more than an hour.

After nearly six decades of running a company, raising a family, publishing a poetry magazine, writing books, serving on boards, and generally sticking my nose into more projects than wisdom would recommend, I have become accustomed to a calendar filled with names. For more than sixty years weekdays meant obligation.

But today my calendar was as open as the sky.

I loved it.

When I was younger, I might have panicked. Surely something must be wrong, because everyone knows you should use every scrap of time for accomplishment. Build something. Buy something. Fix something.

But now, at eighty-six, I have a more relaxed philosophy.

Sometimes the highest form of productivity occurs when you give yourself the time and space to create without a deadline or schedule.

Around nine I ambled into my home office and sat in my chair. And then I just sat there gazing out the window at my lovely backyard and watched a squirrel swipe an avocado from a neighbor’s tree.

Then I spent a few hours reading a new book.  At lunchtime I contemplated the contents of the refrigerator.  A man rushing to complete a task or who is late for an appointment grabs food. A man with no schedule is free to study the ingredients and leftovers in the fridge with the concentration of a museum curator.

I considered whether a piece of pie might qualify as a balanced meal (if consumed thoughtfully).

The best moment came in midafternoon when I briefly wondered whether I might like to take a nap.

Then I wondered if I should read. Or maybe write.

Then I decided to postpone the decision.

Freedom, I’ve discovered, is not needing to have the answers, and tomorrow the calendar will probably refill itself. It always has.

But today was a gift — an entire day without a single date.

How do I respond when I receive such a gift?

I say, “Thank you”.

Alan.

I’m currently 86 years old, but I still remember my first white shirt and tie. My father gave them to me when I was 15, almost three quarters of a century ago.  My memory of the white shirt is indelible.

The shirt was made from Dacron, a synthetic polyester fiber developed by Dupont in the 1950’s. It was known for being strong and wrinkle resistant.  My father had used this shirt, his only white shirt, for a three- month Xavier Cugat tour of the Philippines and Asia.  You read it right.  A single white shirt, hand washed every night by my dad, for three months.  In the tropics. He packed light (and the fabric was also known for drying very fast).

By the time I inherited the shirt it had several problems, most notably the smell.  Evidently, despite all its other qualities, the fabric wasn’t resistant to odors, and over time it had acquired an indelible stench.  My father must have sweated profusely, and the odor of sweat always clung to the shirt, regardless of who was wearing it or how many times it was washed.

There was also a cigarette burn in the sleeve that scratched my left arm every time I wore the darn shirt, and whenever I wore the shirt, I choked. Literally.  My dad had a 15-1/2 inch neck and I have a 17-1/2 inch neck. Securing the top button was nearly impossible, but I sure tried.  Especially for school dances.

When I was married, my wife suggested that I buy a white shirt that fit me properly. Good advice.  But by then the shirt had served its purpose and had looked good enough, to get me married.

I’m delighted to report that society has finally caught up with me in allowing informality, and my too-tight white shirt has long ago been retired.  But I still have six white shirts hanging in my closet, should either of my sons be attending a dance.  And all of them have a proper 17-1/2-inch neck.

But I still hate wearing ties.

Alan