⚾️ Worth the wait, 'cause this one's a home run!

A discourse on waiting, the joys of working from home, and wondering if you've gotten your chrysanthemum flowers yet?

Welcome to Wanderfull! I hope you had a great week. We capped ours off with a trip to Boston to visit my son for parent’s weekend. We toured Fenway Park Saturday afternoon. None of us follow baseball per se, but we really enjoyed learning all of the unique features of the park. A lot of them were so personal and unique that I couldn’t help drawing the parallel between the storied park and ourselves. We all have those quirky (dare I say, fun?) features that make us, well … us! Here’s to getting to know each other a little better. And now, on with the show!

The Dawson family at Fenway Park (October 22, 2022)

A Tip for the Modern Worker

Practice patience. Things rarely move as fast as you’d like. When you have to wait, recall the title of A. A. Milne’s childhood classic, “Be Patient, Pooh.” Information can make the waiting more bearable. If you’re the one waiting, master the tactful soft inquiry about status (but don’t pester). If others are waiting on you, set expectations and never leave people guessing.

I tweeted that out exactly a year ago and it’s part of my Handbook for the Modern Worker. Waiting is never easy, but as I get older, I realize that waiting is an inevitability. It’s gonna happen. It’s far healthier to focus on things you can control while you’re waiting. Find fruitful things to occupy your time and it’ll go by faster. For short-term waiting, I really enjoy the Kindle app on my phone. Wherever I am, I can pull up the book I’m reading and consume a few pages. Focusing on the waiting itself breeds frustration, annoyance, and stress. And who needs more of that? I’ve waited for a new job to start, a new car to arrive, and for stressful situations to resolve. And they’ve all been worth the wait.

#365DayDraw

I drew this and wrote the accompanying annotation as part of my #365DayDraw project 6 years ago today.

It is important to have balance in one's life

Work vs. play. Healthy food vs. junk food. Documentaries vs. dramas. This vs. That. There are always choices to make, and I know that I was thinking about the balance between stress and self-care when I drew this. It was around that time that we became disciplined about incorporating massage and acupuncture as part of our regular preventive maintenance regimen. Balance is good!

Commentary

I started working from home in 1998. I’m absolutely floored that twenty-four years have gone by with me working this way. An article the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

¹

published this week got me thinking about all of the things I’ve been able to see, do, and experience because of the way I work, and it made me immediately grateful again. The Fed shares that Americans now spend 60 million fewer hours traveling to work each day. That’s 3.6 trillion minutes!

How do people fill that time? In general, they found people filling it with leisure activities and (gasp!) sleeping, but the latter is critically important if you weren’t getting enough sleep to begin with. Lest you think “leisure” is loafing around in this context, it’s not: for the younger set, that includes “social events, eating at restaurants or bars, and exercising,” while older workers reported “activities related to childcare, the maintenance of the household, repairs, and meal preparation.” Makes total sense.

It made me think about all the things I’ve been able to do over 2+ decades of not commuting. I love to run and typically run in the morning during prime commuting time. I’ve been able to be there for my kids when they got home from school. Most of our family meals have been together, all around one table. I derive massive satisfaction when I’m able to complete a home repair or home improvement on my own (with thanks to YouTube for instructional help). It’s helped me be more creative, too, with guitar, piano, singing, acting, drawing, and writing three books. The list goes on, and yes, it does include snowmen.

We built this snowman during what would have been an evening commute (March 2006)

The article says that 15% of full-time employees remain fully remote (pre-pandemic, this number was fewer than 6%

²

). Another 30% are hybrid, which means they are home at least a few days a week. This is a seismic shift. I'll be very interested to see the result of the repurposing of those millions of hours.

Miscellanea

• 🍵 I learned so much from Abigail Thomas’ video about teas for winter colds. Check it out to learn about the difference between wind-cold and wind-heat, and why you might want to have dried chrysanthemum flowers on hand this winter.

• 👣 My feet are really grateful for my Oofos purchase from Finger Lakes Running Company. These recovery sandals are great for impact absorption and I enjoy walking around the house in them post-run. Plus, Oofos is fun to say!

• 🥩+🥬+🍎=😃 It’s time to renew all of our CSA memberships! We belong to three and they’re really fantastic, especially during these colder months. Cayuga Sunrise Farm provides beef that’s 100% grass-fed and pork that’s naturally raised on their farm. Sweet Land Farm provides bi-weekly boxes of potatoes, carrots, kale, onions, garlic, winter squash, and greenhouse greens. Black Diamond Farm’s 14-week apple share gives us 80+ modern and heirloom apple varieties through early December. These three farms are just 2 miles from our home. It’s so nice to eat local the whole year!

1. David Dam, Davide Melcangi, Laura Pilossoph, and Aidan Toner-Rodgers, “What Have Workers Done with the Time Freed up by Commuting Less?,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, October 18, 2022.

2. Patrick Coate, “Remote Work Before, During, and After the Pandemic,” Quarterly Economics Briefing–Q4 2020, January 25, 2021