Republished from Vernacular Nicely Said #56
Hello, Dear Readers. It’s been a while.
Sorry about that, leaving you hanging and wondering, yearning even, for my next dispatch.
But there you go. I’ve been busy. Really, not really.
People keep asking – “You busy?” and expect a breathless response that suggests I’m fighting off a queue of frazzled execs baying for my time and attention.
Then when I say, “not really,” they hesitate, their eyes narrow, and in the pregnant pause you can almost hear the whispered words: what are you – some sort of professional failure?
But it’s not like I’m sitting around all day twiddling my thumbs or anything else.
I’ve never been a fan of badge-of-honour “busy”.
How can you possibly do good work when people are yanking on your shirt sleeves. What a way to live. I’m more a life-work balance kinda guy.
Today, for example, in the gap between Teams meetings, I mowed the lawn in 10:00 am sunshine. Lovely, it was, the smell of freshly cut grass, a salute to a clearly unemployed passerby, and the swish of clippings over the back fence into the neighbours.
Out of sight, out of mind, Dear Readers, and rejoice in a little taste of authentic life between episodes of fiendish efficiency.
Actually, that last act reminds me of my friend Bruce who cut holes in the wooden privacy fence facing his neighbours. A social chap, it was his birthday party and the invite list was so long he knew there’d be pressure on the toilets. Later that evening when I mentioned I couldn’t get a look in, he showed me the fence and the three holes he’d drilled earlier that day, each at different heights but all with the diameter of a pepper grinder. “Knock yourself out,” he said. “But reel it in quick if you hear any shouting.”
Luxuriating in that memory – one of the many highlights of my prolific social life – I was rather rudely interrupted by a dinging computer alert flagging my next Teams meeting.
“Busy?” they asked.
“Frantic,” I said.
Keep reading, magnificent humans.