Been working remotely for most of the past 10 years or so but I didn’t pick up a pair of noise cancelling headphones until about seven years ago.
Got a fancy pair of Bose headphones that I eventually upgraded and have found them to be a tremendous asset for travel as they drown out a significant chunk of noise on the plane making it easy to listen to music, watch movies or sleep.
They are too big to take on my daily commute with me so I picked up a pair of the Apple Air Pod Pros a while back and found them to be pretty good as well.
Given the rare occasions upon which I leave the house for work I have used them more often for my time on the treadmill, but there will come a time again in which we leave our homes and I’ll use them on the road.
Thought about all this and more as I put my time in on the treadmill earlier this evening and recognized I am not going hard enough there and made a mental note to fix that.
Stared out the window as I huffed and puffed and thought about the people that are going to be kissing the wrong person tomorrow night which is worse than having no one.
A Story In Four Parts
Listened to Three Dog Night sing about Spain and thought again about traveling and got an idea for telling a story in four parts on four different blogs.
Probably should have been Old Fashioned Love Song and connected it to three part harmony but didn’t for reasons I could explain but won’t.
Took three or 15 calls and responded to a half dozen emails today and shook my fist at myself because vacation is supposed to be for decompressing and these were doing anything but that.
Got a few hairy situations and grew progressively more irritated trying to fix things I didn’t break because others didn’t do a proper job.
Reconciled my irritation with recognition that I knew how to fix them and then grew irritated again because knowing doesn’t mean I could do it.
Reminds me of the number of things I know how to do with my hands and how many I don’t take on because there is a difference between knowing how to do them and how to do them well.
Leaned hard into one of the issues and explained I had ample time to push them to fix things and shook my head because it was bluster on my part with a dash of hope.
Did I mention in a dream I had this skinny guy with tiny hands was flung out of my way?
Blame it on a full moon and recognition that sometimes you have to lean in and drop the shoulder because I won’t just pass through life and hope good things happen.
Sometimes you have to hit the door hard enough knock it off of the hinges.
****
Got a glass filled with Scotch on my left, those fancy headphones on my head and a sweatshirt on to keep me warm, motivated and smiling.
There is a cold rain in North Texas that my kids hope will turn to snow but recognize that is unlikely though you can’t bet against the wacky weather here turning.
iTunes is pushing a Rockin 70’s Volume 2 song list, cut number 3 is on now. That is Don’t Pull Your Love by Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds.
Reminds me of pizza joints covered with saw dust covered floors and our old station wagon. It was a different world and a different life.
My head is still working on alternative solutions to the challenges I addressed earlier and potential answers to questions that are unrelated.
Dad has been gone for 2.5 years now and I have some questions that I have wondered about that I figured I probably wouldn’t be able to get answered.
And suddenly it occurs to me that his old internist and or my brother-in-law might be able to shed some light on a couple of things.
They aren’t life threatening but they provide some minimal irritation and I am curious about what the old man did.
The docs might be able to provide some color to the black and white images which could be helpful but if they can’t there isn’t any real loss.
I consider this application of Einstein’s thought.
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. -Albert Einstein
Turn on some music that spurs more thoughts that aren’t directly related to the challenges I keep turning back to and I think I have something that will work.
Reminds me of a conversation at a wedding with a guy who tells me about his JD and MBA with the intention of impressing me and my flippant response.
“If I chose to put a couple of years in I could walk away with all those and a couple more degrees. He paused and asked it it was so easy why I hadn’t done so.
“I don’t need a bunch of initials to impress people. I can show them how much I know or don’t know in other ways.”
I walked away before he could respond because I was bored and there were more interesting people to speak with. Not entirely sure what made me think about it, but life experience has made the quote more relevant to me.
I am a repository of trivia and information about a wide variety of things but an argument can be made for what the value of knowledge you don’t use is.
There is something to be said for application and for knowing enough to know how to find the answer to the questions you come across.
Think I might need to write a post about this at a later date, there is plenty of meat left on the bones and I don’t have the patience to dig into that one now.
Still looking out the window thinking about the people that are stuck with the wrong person and working on how to explain my solution to a different problem in a way that won’t lead to a conference call.
If I focus on it for a little bit longer I can come up with a way to break it up into three or four pieces.
Just got to stay with it for a few more, turn it over, around and about…
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