Orchestra Finale at the University of Victoria. Eve is about one pixel in size in the back right.
Sabbatical Week 4
May 26 – Our local school district held a mass orchestra finale: 750 student instrumentalists from 30+ local schools packed into a sweaty gymnasium floor at the University of Victoria, with hundreds of parents elbow to elbow in the bleachers. It was the biggest crowd I’ve experienced since the pandemic. I ran into a friend who has kids in another school. He had a briefcase at his feet, hoping to get some work done in the few minutes between student drop off and the start of the performance. I remember that feverish need to sneak work in the margins, to overlap tasks. Drop the kids off for dance class then dash down to the parking lot to work in the car until returning to collect them. Take the car in for service and find the the closest coffee shop to minimize downtime. And occasionally: start file backups at the end of the day and nip down throughout the evening to ensure they stayed on course. Always multitasking, always multiple layers of attention.
One of the great joys of sabbatical has been the simplicity of monotasking.
May 28 – Relatedly, I’m beginning to understand how retirees think. Life unfolds with little advance planning. Instead of deadlines and to-do lists buzzing in your head when you wake up, there’s a sleepy saunter off to breakfast and vague wonderment about what to do today. Every day is a Saturday, unscripted. But this means it’s also hard to rise above the fog of each day to any larger projects. I can see why some retirees become glued to their TV and never get around to finishing the art project or book they always meant to write.
And in the absence of big demands, mental clarity is still elusive. Instead, small tasks absorb exaggerated stress. Chores that rarely weighed on my mind (because there wasn’t space for them) become “the-only-thing-I-could-possibly-do-today.” Chaperoning a school field trip for a couple hours this past week seemed like a herculean task. Even though I have far more free time, I’m actually working out less at the gym.
