How to Beat Downtime: Reframe The Word "Excellent"

My old pal George L. from Vancouver Canada was, in his prime, one of the best and most respected ice climbers and mountaineers in all of the Great White North. He may have slowed down in the intervening years (he's now happily married, a proud papa, and a respected authority on the subject of safety rigging at heights), but back when he was regularly mountain climbing I had a chance to ask him how he got through being snowed-in for days at a time in an impossibly small tent on the side of a glaciated peak-- a situation that would make most people both claustrophobic and a tad batty. His reply was surprisingly matter-of-fact: You just have to adjust your thinking-- instead of letting the situation get the better of you, change it to "Today, I'm going to re-read the one book I brought for the fourth time and in 3 hours I'm going to leave this tent for a bathroom break, and it's going to be great." I can't say I fully appreciated this old mountain dog's wisdom until I moved here. Being underemployed as I am (yes, some scattered projects and pick-up work are always in the mix), means that to keep busy and active I make my daily routine incredibly inefficient, now even more so that my gym closed abruptly and unannounced (and right after I gave him a 3-month payment, natch). So when I go grocery shopping, even though I know for a fact we're going to run out of something in a couple days, I purposefully won't buy its replacement until the time comes. For instance: we ran out of paper towels last night, bingo bango, there was a building block of today's activities. Now, I gotta admit, I took the tram to the far side of the Altstadt first to check to see if a place will air a certain sporting broadcast, tried to buy some bedsheets at the department store (our current flannel sheets just aren't cutting it in the summertime) but then I set off across the city and homeward to find the final goal-- paper towels. And this was indeed most excellent. My other task of sitting around while the comically incompetent workmen continue to finish off the apartment (yes folks, 8 months after moving in we're still waiting on some minor interior and all exterior work to wrap up) isn't so excellent, but it needs to be done-- take the bad with the good, right?

File under "unrelated and meaningless milestones," but this post marks the 100th (!!) entry of this blog. As it was envisioned, I expected to hit this mark some time ago. As always, I will endeavor to be better in the future. Thanks to my regular readers, and all you lurkers too-- we're just warming up here, so keep reading!