Relative Something

This morning dawned as my final day at the lake after a week of vacation. The weather is just about as perfect as it could possibly be, just like the day before, and the day before that. In fact, the entire previous week has been divine, even with a couple of thunder showers tossed in. For whatever brilliant reason out of the mysteries of psychological behavior, I found myself, twice, waking from a dream about a past workplace. That sure felt like a stab at my attempts to completely dissociate from work during my time off. Maybe that was my mind attempting to purge work from my thoughts, by doing so while I was sleeping. Thanks, anyway.

One project that I resumed during the week was sculpting the wood bracelet I am making for Cyndie. I tend to work meticulously slow, and that gives me ample time to enjoy the transformation from a chunk to the flowing shape. I am fascinated by the variety of visuals that appear as the grain is revealed. Lines appear that I would love to keep, but then must sacrifice in the effort of working toward a more refined shape. These are a couple of shots that I captured a few days ago. It is now even more finished than is shown in these images. It is a real trick to capture all the detail in a 2-dimensional image. Maybe a video is in order…

There is something that I have discovered about how fast this week has passed in my mind. These days of doing almost nothing have flown by so quick that today feels like we have only been up here for a long weekend. In fact, today is day 10. Tomorrow, I return to work. A few days ago, I discovered that I had no idea what time it was. I have rarely looked at a clock all week. When I checked for the time that day, it turned out to be 2:30 p.m., about 3 hours later than I imagined it might be. It occurred to me that on a normal work day, by that hour I would probably have checked the clock about a hundred times.

My thinking is that I should try checking the time repeatedly, while on vacation, so I can absorb how much time is passing while I am doing nothing. That way, maybe the glorious days will feel like they last as long as a day of work.

I’m just sayin’…