“Did you miss me?”

This is a standard greeting between friends who haven’t seen each other for a while.  The expected reply is – “Yes, of course I did.”

But there is always a question in my mind.  Should I be rote, or should I be real?  Or something in between that we call “polite”?

I used to have an internal debate about this, because I knew what was expected, but I also knew that, personally.  I seldom miss people when I’m not with them.  I tend, instead, to focus on the people I’m with in the moment.  That makes perfect sense to me.  As I have written in the past, I’m pragmatic.  If I wake up at 5:30 am worrying about something I can’t do anything about, I simply go back to sleep.

Today when asked “Do you miss me,” I like to offer a different, but truthful, response.  Something like, “I’m delighted to see you.”

A few people might press the point.  “Yes, but did you miss me?”

Darn! So much for being polite.

My short answer is something like this: “I always enjoy seeing you, but when we’re apart I hope you are enjoying yourself, either with someone else or by yourself, just like I am.”  I don’t really think about what others might be doing or, who they’re with, when we’re apart.

I know there are those who yearn in the absence of a loved one.  But I think it is both generous and self-serving to give them well wishes in your absence, and to assume they reciprocate.  All of us should enjoy our lives to the fullest all of the time.

Perhaps that is more than you wanted to know.  Or do you live your life like I do, trying to maximize each moment?

I also reserve my emotional energy for people, not things.  I love my friends and family.  While I like my home and car, they can be repaired or replaced.  People cannot.  So I seldom say that I love a “thing”.

I spend my emotional energy on those I’m with, including my readers with whom I’m delighted to share my blog.  I hope you have a wonderful week… and that you won’t miss me.  At least, not until next Tuesday morning.

Love,

Alan

Yesterday evening I watched the final college football game of the season, with Alabama and Georgia contending for the national NCAA championship.

Next weekend the National Football League has scheduled six playoff games, all at different times.  After many years they finally figured out that their product attracts more eyeballs when they spread the games out over three days.  That suits me fine.  I plan to watch them all.

My problem is not this week, but the week following February 13th.  That is the day of the Super Bowl, and by 7:00 pm in Los Angeles that game will be over, and with it football — finished until August.  What am I going to do for entertainment during the spring and summer?  I find baseball boring, and the Los Angeles Lakers are having a mediocre season.

I’d like to say that I’ll turn to writing, but I have made that promise to myself many times before.  I write this blog every week because I have a deadline and I am motivated by deadlines.

I am likely, instead, to turn to my entertainment of last resort – reading books.  My biggest challenge with reading, however, is that I can’t do anything else at the same time.  I have to pay complete attention to the book.  By contrast, when I watch (or half-watch) football, I can play a game of solitaire on my iPhone or have a conversation with Daveen.  But reading a book is like driving a car.  When I’m the driver I have to pay full attention. Fortunately, Daveen loves to drive, and when I’m a passenger I can allow myself the luxury of distraction.

I always look on the bright side.  Thanks to COVID-19 we‘ve had an unusual opportunity.  Our typical entertainments – parties, eating in restaurants, or seeing movies in theaters – are mostly off the table (pun intended) for a while.  So each of us gets to fill in the blank spaces of our lives in a different way.

Most of us are resilient. If something (such as COVID-19) is inevitable, we can embrace it, or in this case, embrace avoiding it.

It has been an opportunity, if not to get to know each other better, to at least get to know ourselves better.

And oh, the stories that will be told about the Plague of 2020-2022.  But if this is a once in a hundred year experience, I’m glad I won’t be around for the next one.

Alan

Welcome to 2022.

When I was in high school in the mid-1950’s, I participated on the competitive debate team. I would spend hours in the school library searching for quotations and statistics from experts to support both the affirmative and negative sides of the debate topic for that year. Oddly, I never found any expert projections on any subject calculated beyond 1975.

As the year 1975 actually approached, I realized that I had developed an unconscious belief that on January 1 of that year the world would end and that we would all fall of the face of the earth.  (The most interesting part of a belief is that it needn’t have any relationship to reality – past, present, or future.)

On that New Year’s Day almost fifty years ago I was almost surprised when I woke up and nothing had changed.

In this New Year, I appreciate that what each new day offers (whether we call it January 1st or any other date) is basically one thing – opportunity.

Today I will have the opportunity to complete some work, enjoy time with my family, and begin reading one of the books given to me over the holidays.  I also have the opportunity to finish the peach cobbler from yesterday, unless someone else from my household has beaten me to it.  (They didn’t.)

If I were to make a single New Year’s Resolution it would be this:  In 2022 I will create more deadlines for myself.  This is because I find that without a deadline I don’t work on much.  I don’t know what those other deadlines are yet, because I haven’t set a deadline for setting my deadlines.

Isn’t rationalization grand?

As I wrote at the beginning of this blog, welcome to 2022.

It’s another year of opportunity.

Alan