Fight or flight
For reasons too personal and tedious to get into, I’m not a big fan of being home on the weekends. So even if I don’t have any travel planned, I will often go to a hotel in San Francisco for Friday and Saturday nights, staying in the city right through Sunday night. (Also: I love hotels.)
Even though I was in New York last weekend and will be there next weekend (and again from the 18th - 21st, with a trip to Austin in between and a stop in Las Vegas after a trip to Paris at the end of March), I wanted to go there again this weekend. New York is my favorite place and I’d go there every weekend if I could. I even find the flight there a pleasure.
Alas, for some reason the flights to New York - and everywhere, it seemed - were just not cheap enough for me to be able to justify the trip this weekend. Right up until 6PM, I was looking for a good ticket somewhere, but there did not seem to be any. Even the hotels in San Francisco weren’t as inexpensive as I usually can find them. Finally, I accepted that I would have to stay home. SIGH.
Ninety minutes later, through a course of unexpected events, I was having an incredible time with a great group of people. We stayed out until 11.30PM, which is a late night for non-work-related socializing in my life these days. Suddenly, I was really glad I wasn’t on an airplane.
This morning, I got up earlier than I’d have liked and ended up on the waterfront in my neighborhood. I had breakfast with with some friends, later had a fantastic creole lunch with Hillary, came home and made three pounds of homemade applesauce, threw together one of the best dinners I’ve ever made, and had about a dozen really useful and thought-provoking conversations over the course of the day. I wore myself out by getting stuff done, the kind of tasks I find so offensive that I’d rather fly to the opposite coast to avoid them.
Is this part of being a grown-up? Staying home once in a while and doing what’s in front of you? It goes against every instinct I have, but it does give a satisfying sense of accomplishment. I find this all rather worrying, so the remaining eight flights this month will come as something of a relief…as long as I don’t end up like this.
Filed under: Life
Lots of adults minimise their domestic jobs, nothing wrong with that- but I do think that getting on with a few things that go against your instincts* is a rite of passage we all come to eventually! :) Something to do with broadening our ability to appreciate things.
* or seem to- depends on your definition of instinct v. impulse.
I’m told that I should complete these tasks for the satisfaction of having done them. I agree with that, up to a point, which is when I go back to delegating and running. :)