Relative Something

Nestled subtly between the moments of life when we are actively engaged in preparation for an activity, or slowly winding down from the post-action review that people naturally do, there is a time that I label as ‘between.’ There is no shortage of tasks awaiting my attention during these times, but lately, I find myself more interested in exploring how long I can put off tending to any of them before my next spurt of activity.

It seems to me to be a lingering residual of the recent span of time when my back pain prevented me from participating in any of my usual activities. I have successfully completed a series of physical therapy sessions which relieved me of my back pain and released me to resume as much normal activity as pain allows. Yet, I hesitate. But I am not just hesitating to resume all of my former activity. There is also significant neglect, lately, for my daily therapeutic walk and exercises.

I’ve decided that I might as well explore this in-between place while I’m here. I keep looking for what the trigger will be that finally kicks me back into a more normal level of activity. I can’t help wonder about the one variable that is always changing in all of this. I keep aging. I’m not clear on how much a role it is playing in my current situation, but it does color my thinking on the issue. Maybe one of these times I’ll find that I end up never going back to something I did before.

There is another thing that complicates all of this. I tend to compartmentalize my work-time at the day-job from the rest of my free-time. I don’t have the luxury of any ‘between’ time to explore at work. In fact, the extremely heavy amount of business lately, (and the fact that I am covering for the owner’s responsibilities while he is vacationing) is an obvious influence on the level of energy I have for investing in the variety of my non-work activities.

Maybe it will all be as simple as, …I’ll pick up my free-time activities again when the work load at the day-job finally settles to a reasonable amount.

Could this whole thing be the result of having succumbed, this summer, to paying a young neighbor to mow my lawn, like ‘old’ people do when such chores become too much for them? Time will tell.