Free Time

Sometimes unexpected, sometimes created.  Task free.  It may last only minutes, sometimes hours.  That Me Time that enables reversal of languishing.  

An unanticipated chunk came my way this morning.  Once weekly, my OLLI enrollment keeps me on-site most of the day.  Leave house at 8:35 to get settled in the classroom by 9AM.  The session goes for 75 minutes.  Then a half-hour interval between morning classes.  I allocate that mostly to socializing, another means of repelling Languishing if done in a purposeful way. Class until noon.  Then lunch, which I pack before I leave home.  This takes minutes.  A two hour break follows, anticipated work time, not always as productive as I had hoped.  I've learned to leave my laptop at home.  Final class 2:30-3:45, then a drive home.  It makes for a long day.  This morning the professor's illness cancelled the first session.  Not only Me Time, but prime time.  

My Daily Task List, assembled the previous evening, omitted items that I could not realistically perform away from home.  Nearly two hours at home to do the things I anticipated as unrealistic.  I have priorities, but my list also includes things I'd like to do, even should do, but are not priorities.  Some I would never do, even though doing them has a high reward.  After looking over my list, I allotted twenty minutes to making my desk maximally functional, that is dealing with papers.  

Papers kept within arm's reach are not placed randomly, though often not where I can get the ones I need most when I need them.  To my right, I keep blank paper, mostly pads received from non-profits to entice a donation.  Atop that sit papers with writing, partially pursued projects.  To my left, the daily and weekly tasks.  In a leather zippered portfolio sit projects in progress.  In a cloth basket on the floor to my left I keep folders, the most important containing outlines or pre-submission manuscripts.  How much can I organize in 20 minutes?  It turns out, quite a lot.  All papers came out.  Those I need today went to my left.  An outline of topics already composed and topics I still want to transform for other readers went into the portfolio, along with ample blank paper.  That becomes my working foundation.  At hand in My Space, portable for the long afternoons of unoccupied OLLI time. Outlines and partially written manuscripts in a separate folder kept behind the portfolio in the cloth basket.  All in twenty minutes, leaving me primarily to sort the manuscripts and outlines already in progress with paper clips, or perhaps new folders.  And stray or completed papers now have a temporary home in a recycling box.

Dealing with a one-time opportunity differs from recurrent captured time.  Once a week I attend a course that uses up the entire morning.  The benefit of being there does not justify the preparaton and drive.  That's more than two hours every morning, prime time.  It is scheduled:  dress, drive, play guitar, clean up, drive.  I made a decision to drop the class at mid-semester.  As tempting as it seems to leave it unscheduled for the remaining six weeks of the term, I think it better to replace one obligation with another dedicated to that particular schedule allotment.  What might I do once a week every week for six weeks in lieu of strumming aimlessly on a guitar?  It takes place in my mental prime, so best replaced by some type of challenging Deep Work. Not laundry or dishes.

Unscheduled time offers an opportunity.  Removal of previous scheduling discloses its value, always assessed by what I could be doing instead.  Important things that get me ahead.  My mind.  Maybe my health.  When occupied by a class or coping with traffic, what I could be doing instead stays in the background.  When released from a scheduled obligation, the possibilities expand, but still need purposeful effort.  That Friday morning guitar lesson and related transit reposition as an appointment with myself.  Deep Work to replace strumming chords that I didn't understand.  Free Time sometimes yields more when it is made less free.

Solving Languishing

Nothing seems especially wrong.  The expected annoyances.  Some age related hints from the lab that I need to keep current with health maintenance.  I got top prize in the spouse lottery.  Living prudently allowed ample wealth in late life.  Kids as independent adults bring us nachas, worth some of the travails of getting them there.  Late life gets all the important boxes checked.

I don't feel sad or apprehensive.  The world has not left me behind.  My mind continues to work pretty much as it should.  No major problems with temperament.  Social relationships above threshold, though never abundant.

Despite ample good things and little distress, I work within a cloud with a few desired parts missing.  An emptiness waiting for worthwhile activities to enter that blank space.  The psychologists have termed this Languishing.  Not ill, but not energetic.  A recognition of incomplete but lacking the motivation to put myself at risk or leave my accumulated comfort zones to seek a remedy.

This condition was apparently termed by a sociology professor at Emory in the early 2000s.  The pandemic exposed its prevalence.  A number of advice forums from books, to articles in widely read publications, to YouTube presentations, offer consistent guidance on acquiring a better self-image on well-being.  None seem exceptionally difficult, all within my grasp.  Since motivation deficit defines the condition, some of the interventions may need to ignore motivation.  Just define a task and start. And all activities that experts recommend introducing have finite ways of determining their achievement.  Complete something that won't reappear on tomorrow's To Do List.

My social framework seems OK.  I attend shul, classes at OLLI, and selectively at synagogue, which I often judge as excessive.  I try to have people for dinner, though my wife is less than receptive to this sometimes.  I have a tendency to keep to myself.  Interestingly, for my long career I met people previously unknown to me daily, usually in the capacity of an expert who other people sought out.  I liked interacting with strangers, amusing them sometimes, listening intently to what they tried to convey to me most of the time.  Maybe I can focus on relating to strangers again.  My conversations with acquaintences at my usual gathering points center more on superficial greetings than exchange of challenging ideas.  I seem at my best, even most energetic, when verbally dueling, something not often as welcome  by my mental partner.  The Jewish approach to learning, called Chevruta, centers on a process between two thinking partners with opposing views of a common framework.  I find myself too often politely deflected by somebody who learned to do that at Corporate Charm School than mentally engaged, as was the norm and expectation of my training years.  

My daily, weekly, and semi-annual projects have their share of difficult things.  Most of the professional guidance on Languishing centers around the personal challenges.  It's too easy to look at my lists, accomplish easy tasks, which then get a slash through the words.  The big stuff takes some thought, sometimes physical effort, but also yields the most gratifying experience.  Commenting to an author on her work, then getting a response takes me out of Languishing, even if only transiently.  Even with no response to a major effort, just knowing that I did something not easily duplicated allows a sense of accomplishment, if not yet flourishing.  I have those initiatives but don't complete them as consistently as I should.  That's probably the best escape from Languishing.  Difficult project, work time without distraction, finite end point.

Finally, the experts recommend some form of Me Time.  I do this pretty consistently.  Technically, time alone in my car may qualify, but I think the advice requires a chunk of time to my mind to wander, maybe with a pen and paper to record the ideas that flow through when nobody else can interrupt them.

None of these elements pose significant barriers.  My greatest challenge may be working on something close to my capacity regularly, with an end point, and a reward. Some tangible outline of what I will do in an undistracted way, and how I will know when it is completed.  If you try all elements at once, Social, Me Time, Completion, and Effort, the mind registers it as programming.  I think I'll start with diligent but challenging effort for two weeks, then reassess.

Challenging Night

Sleep has run into a few snags.  Consecutive nights of deficit, difficult compensation the following day.  These challenge my commitment to follow professional sleep hygiene recommendations to set the bed as off-limits for all but designated sleep hours.

My first glance at the clock registered as 12:15AM or so.  Then periodic assessments of my watch most subsequent hours through the night.  Seconds each time, though never arising from bed.  Shifting my pillow a lot. Not changing position that much but redirecting my down cover, sometimes to enhance warmth, other times to increase exposure.  The room had not achieved its customary darkness.  Door to bedroom left open, with a dim light in the upper hall.  Bathroom door left open, though with curtain obscuring ambient light in the backyard.  I've been wearing a Casio 168 most nights.  To make the numerals visible,  I tap a button that makes the window transiently robin egg blue to highlight the black numbers.  Each tap and reading takes seconds.  This watch does not track sleep.  I have a Tozo 3 that does, though not worn for a few months.  While the accuracy of its sleep estimates falls well short of a sleep lab, a few nights with this on my wrist may enable some corrections.  I do not know how much sleep I got from my usual lights-out time to arising, but the frequent clock checks suggest a deficit.

Despite some deprivation, I arose from bed at my usual time.  I had scheduled a fasting lab draw for 8AM. Technically, coffee with no additives does not affect Fasting Glucose or Lipid results, but I stayed at my keyboard without my usual morning stimulant.  I swallowed the morning pills dry.  I knew the day would expose some impairment, but getting to the lab on time, maintaining good cheer while there, and driving attentively in each direction did not impose any difficulty.  Often on fasting lab days, since I am coffee-deprived, I follow the venepuncture with a breakfast outing or a stop at a coffee shop.  I did not bring any pen or paper with me, nor could I think optimally if I had, so I just went home.  By then I felt tired, though light chores remained within my capacity.  Deep Work, those challenging mental tasks which usually dominate my mornings, got postponed to later in the day, though not entirely eliminated.  Instead, now feeling some energy impairment, though not a desire for sleep, I substituted a few easy items.  Crosswords done with reasonable proficiency.  Snafu from lab reported to my doctor to try to avoid a fasting redraw.  Arranged an important phone call with my financial advisor.  While I avoid Social Media on Wednesdays, r/judaism still seemed within my mental capacity to participate.  I even wrote a thoughtful response to one of the posters.  

Finally, a k-cup of coffee.  Then I set a timer for 45 minutes.  Glasses off, into my recliner at full recline.  I never fell asleep, but felt my energy had been sufficiently uplifted at about 40 minutes.  More easy tasks, or at least those not requiring mental prowess.  I followed my MWF Stretching video.  A little later, I completed my assigned physical therapy program to allow a medial meniscal injury its best chance to heal. By then that mug of coffee had provided a boost to alertness.

Late afternoon has arrived.  I still don't feel sleepy.  Getting back to fixed sleep times, which has been successful over a year or two, seems within reach.  I'd still like to tackle one or two challenging cognitive tasks before the day ends.  I probably can.  Priority after supper. Not expecting my best work, but above threshold.  Some reading, some evening chores.  Address a few neglected initiatives.

While sleep deprivation feels uncomfortable and it detracts from performance, I have enough valuable activities that do not require maximum mental or physical attention.  These today.  Reset to the most challenging tomorrow.

Visiting Grandchildren

We live in the best of times, despite public turmoil.  Those same technological advancements that now enable Conflict Entrepreneurs to motivate tribes to stomp upon other tribes, also allow more gratifying connections.  My father never met his grandparents, my mother only her paternal grandfather, after whom I am named.  My grandparents sailed across an ocean, never expecting to return, and they didn't, except for my maternal grandmother who travelled with a measure of hardship to the new sovereign State of Israel not long after its Independence to see a few surviving relatives of the Holocaust.  She left my grandfather alone for weeks to do this.

I knew all four of my grandparents.  They survived to my mid-childhood, lived a drive away, not so far as to require significant planning, and connected by a new superhighway that my father traveled daily as he commuted to work.  We saw them often.

My children also knew their grandparents,  though under much easier circumstances.  Their maternal grandmother died before their birth, but my father had remarried, leaving them with four grandparents.  We lived an easy drive from one set, and eventually a flight from another.  We enjoyed ample income and enough protected time to enable travel.  And despite accessibility, we visited them far more often than they made a trip to come to us.

Our children made my wife and me new grandparents in 2025.  We navigate a different world, mostly better.  College and advanced degrees, which our two children each earned, essentially train them to secure employment.  There were no family businesses, though they each entered professions that distribute employment to all parts of America, unlike government, entertainment, and financial employment, which have regional centers.  They settled in suitable situations, one a five-hour drive, the other a five-hour flight.  American demographics now have people marrying later and starting families later.  My father became a grandfather at age 61, not quite retired, nor as well off as his sons.  My turn did not arrive until age 74, long retired with ample funds and discretionary time.  Yet, health and local commitments limit our ability to spontaneously get in the car or arrange a five-day cross-country visit

Communications have advanced beneficially. In lieu of travel, we can watch our infants progress to toddler on WhatsApp or Zoom.  It's hardly the same as holding them, but this form of remote contact remains available almost any time.  As a result, my grandchildren see us with more frequency than I saw my grandparents in the 1950s, despite more distant geographic access.  

My children, and now their children, have less reservation about air travel or even long road trips than my wife and I do.  Each infant has flown cross-country.  A five-hour drive from my son's house to mine, extended another two hours to visit his wife's sister and her family, needs some planning, but not a lot.  Getting to the other set of grandparents takes nine hours by car each way.  They've done it.  My senior citizen view of travel has lost some of the spontaneity of my youth.  Occasionally I will offer my wife an unexpected out for dinner or treat myself to a slice of pizza without planning, but most travel, even errands, imposes some preparation.  Distance visiting also eliminates day trips, the most frequent format for seeing my grandparents and my children's maternal grandparents.  No matter who travels, us or them, it becomes an expedition.  Mostly we accommodate each other in our homes, reasonable comfort for visiting my son, more spartan in my daughter's apartment on the opposite coast, and definitely improvised when they come to us.  In their cities, though, my wife and I also travel with an element of tourism, selecting a few sites we've not visited previously.

This season I had intended to travel to each of them.  The car trip should have been straightforward.  Pick a long weekend and go.  We did.  But they have activities of their own.  Son with work obligations, daughter-in-law with professional obligations.  The following weekend, they make the nine-hour round trip to the other grandparents.  Then two more weekends when my wife has commitments.  They will share Thanksgiving with us instead.

I had intended to a transcontinental trip after OLLI concludes, and still might.  A few days with descendants, a few days of tourism.  My own medical care needs do not yet have the predictability to make air reservations with a week's hiatus from different elements of care that folks on Medicare anticipate.  So again, daughter and granddaughter come to us.

There seems a measure of justice built into our situation.  When my wife and I selected an optimal place to settle and begin our family, we included parental visits in our preferences.  Easier for us to get to them than for them to get to us.  And that is how it played out.  The distances of my kids' generation are much larger, but it still seems easier for them to visit us when they want than for us to travel to them when we want.  Probably how it was always meant to be.

Jewish Reading

Several years ago, for one of my semi-annual projects, I committed myself to two new periodical subscriptions.  I sought guidance, some helpful, some not.  Eventually I selected two with daily on-screen issues.  Years later, The Forward and The Atlantic remain on annual autopay.  I target myself to read one each day except shabbos from The Atlantic and two from The Forward. For the most part, I've done rather well over several years.  The Atlantic offers audio versions of most features.  I never just listen, but commonly read along as the narrator's  AI voice recites the words.  Most of what I select as my preferred daily article takes 8-12 minutes.  One feature took 53 minutes:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/  I did not listen to this one but read it in segments over a few days.  The author, a staff journalist, predicted the decline in attentive reading, the type that makes the higher brain centers sort out ideas, along with accumulating information.  She acknowledged that our screens and feeds have forced us to read more words but of less complexity.  We see and absorb snippets.  Social media posts, advertising that psych grads from competitive schools chose for us based on intensity of reaction.  Junk mail, nearly all unread, fills mailboxes.  Email scrolling with its FOMO displaces better activities, though still with a few opportunities for interaction with another person at each view.  Her theme seems to be that this increase in word volume falls short on purpose.  The effort I made in choosing my new paid subscriptions, including a modest financial commitment, suggests that I sought presentations that would pass through an editor before getting to me.  What I got to read would force some upgrade on my intellect.  It did. 

While my professional activity was medical, for which targeted study remained a priority during a long career, my more casual reading had a Jewish underpinning.  Much of what I read came to me passively in the form of synagogue newsletters, a local Jewish weekly intended to promote the organization with my attachment to it as a byproduct, and a more substantial monthly periodical in magazine print.  I have followed Parsha of the Week commentaries since the early days of the internet and quickly latched onto yutorah.org in the MP3 era, though most of those presentations were audio, not visual.  Newer research suggests that audiobooks have less impact than struggling with written words and sentences.  I probably could have figured that out from college where lecture content whizzed by but mastery of textbooks enabled high exam scores.

Now in retirement, my professional reading mostly includes three articles from each weekly edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.  Jewish reading has taken on a greater daily focus.

I complete a fair amount of regular reading, some scheduled, some not.  Two articles daily in The Forward.  A previous editor used to publish the emails of her journalists.  This has enabled me to make comments directly to many of the authors, including herself.  If not overwhelmed by email and the comments are specific to the piece, these correspondents have a tendency to write back.  Some give a "thanks for reading" response, but the younger ones seem more appreciative of the feedback on their content and expression.  This moves daily reading upward, from a benefit to me to a shared exchange which enhances the consumer of content and its provider.

The Atlantic covers a diverse array of topics, though with a weight towards political analysis.  I tend to gravitate to the Jewish themes.  These usually come from people not on the magazine's payroll and are longer.  Often they take more than one session for me to read, but they are substantial.  Many authors have their own websites with contact information, so a direct or indirect email with my own perspective on their subject can be conveyed.  These people have prominent positions that overwhelm them with email, but responses occasionally happen.  More recently, The Atlantic has instituted a readers forum where a few hundred comments get added for most articles, including the Jewish ones.  There is a mechanism for responding to individual comments, resulting in threads.  I prefer to post my own thoughts on what The Atlantic published.  Responses to my input are minimal, but forcing me to think about what I just read has its own value.

In the last year or so, I've added eJewish Philanthropy to my daily Jewish consumption.  It arrives in my email at different times, but only on rare weekdays does it not appear at all.  My relationship to Machers could best be described as inconsistent.  Some admirable, many self-promoting in the quest for status.  At least those I encounter locally.  The universe of Judaism is quite large.  Many I only know on paper or on screen.  And I know that funding enables many good projects.  If I were a mogul, would I fund Day Schools or Symphonies?  What I tend to read from eJPhil are two things.  Usually I select an article, mostly an op-ed promoting a pet project that a person of title has.  I can usually relate to what is written.  They allow comments.  I add my own.  Mostly, they have an editor that keeps those from cheerleaders and nodders but denies print to those from critics.  That view of Achdus, or Unity, has probably diminished organizational Judaism in my lifetime.  I no longer look to see if my remarks appear.  I also tend to search the Birthday acknowledgements placed at the end.  I open the links for my contemporaries, mostly people with more impressive cv's than me, often linked to their Wikipedia profile.  Many law alumni, many financial mavens, a few with organizational titles.  Doctors underrepresented.

These relatively short articles, most readable in one session, now arrive on my screen passively.  They keep me engaged.  They also give me a questionalble justification for what I don't read, those links to local personal encounters that generated an unfavorable impression, even resentment sometimes.

While short reading and selective responses on my part meet the small but consistent efforts that lead to a measure of mastery, books also remain part of my Jewish engagement, two or three most years. Arc of a Covenant took three library renewals to complete.  Corresponding with book authors has become more difficult, though not impossible.   Books published by commercial firms have to go through considerable editing, so the end reader can rely on a professional improving the fluency, upgrading detail, and minimizing loose tangents.  They tend to be more complex, more dependent on other writing dozens of previous pages ago.  Sometimes engaging with my Jewish world, or my professional one, requires undertaking the most difficult projects.  Books serve that purpose for me.  A consistent slog to get the entirely read, typically a half hour most nights.  The satisfaction of completion, though, exceeds what my daily reading of news articles and op-eds generates.

Slow but consistent.  Two articles from The Forward, one from The Atlantic with Jewish themes as a priority, one from eJPhil most days.  A comment on content twice a week, directly to the author if an email address is available, to the Disqus option along with the observations of other readers. Four parsha commentaries every Thursday, now mostly written but audio in previous Torah cycles. And two books of suitable complexity each year.

Something remains missing.  In college we used to have term papers, those explorations of a  topic that require seeking resources and creating a presentation.  These have not entirely disappeared, but have become rare.  Occasionally I will get an invitation for a presentation at synagogue that requires some exploration.  And I write my own op-eds and narratives, submit a few haphazardly, but rarely reach anyone else.

Reading has a way of keeping my thoughts open to what others think.  It has its limitations, particularly in the social sphere.  Committee meetings and personal gatherings also promote exchange of ideas between people.  Zoom sessions have inhibited this, as people need to take turns, much as they would take their turn to type a statement onto Disqus at the end of an article.  Yet little elevates my mood more than a response from an author to whose work I have assessed, sometimes challenged.  Interactive and community does not always require personal presence.

So for now I seem content with my daily quota of Jewish thought and the format by which it comes my way.

Avoiding Bed

OOB.  A common entry I often wrote on inpatient order sheets.  Nurses understood it as Out of Bed, either daily or twice a day.  Leaving recovering patients to loll delays their recovery.  Nurses know this, but they have a lot of urgencies, from administering medicines, changing IVs, and preparing patients for procedures.  Presenting mobilization of recovering patients as a specific task to get checked off as a to-do assures that it does not sink to an undone low priority.

Approaching my mid-70s with few mandatory daily tasks that require mobilization, staying horizontal, whether bed or lounge chair, comes too easily.  I sleep there, but also read, banter with my wife sometimes.  She watches TV there, though I prefer the recliner of sub-optimal comfort in My Space.  As I review daily tasks, most require me to mobilize myself.  And even those reading tasks lose attentiveness when done in bed instead of at my desk or at a round table at OLLI.  

Staying OOB has a more important objective than productivity, though.  It is integral to sleep hygiene.  This enables more restorative sleep for the properly assigned sleep times, which leads to more energetic daylight hours.  As a result, I've gotten fairly rigid at when I can occupy my bed.  Mostly off limits from 6:50AM which I've assigned my rising time to 9:30PM which has become my wind-down hour in preparation for lights out at 10PM.  I still have the downstairs sofa as horizontal, something needing its own elimination, and my recliner for watching TV.  This unfortunately has become a surrogate for extending my morning sleep hours, though nearly always with an interruption for dental hygiene first.

While I committed myself to following sleep hygiene recommendations, and I note the benefits which have come my way, it remains a hard thing for me to do.  The fixed wake and sleep times do not always match my energy cycles.  The hours in bed, while maintaining predictable sleep stages, do not always leave me rested.  Fortunately, people and other animals have a mechanism for sleep interruption with catch-up later for essential tasks, like answering a baby's cry to escaping a predator.  The respect for that daily 6:50AM nudge, though, does not always move me to something essential.  And when sleep-deprived, irrespective of reason, I might fall asleep in the lounge chair with the TV's blue emitted light unable to overcome genuine fatigue.  Sleep hygiene takes some real effort for some genuine benefits, though physiologic failures require gracious acceptance without berating myself for weakness or inadequate grit.

I do a few things most days as an incentive to avoid my bedroom during assigned waking hours.  Either my wife or I make the bed as soon as the second of us arises.  I don't want to upset handiwork that took effort, even if only about three minutes.  I will place things on the made bed, often a basket of laundry, to make it harder to just plop myself back down at the first hint of sleep.  And for some reason, the master bedroom has the least adapted climate control of any room in our house, which has caused me to place a window air conditioner for the summer and an electric space heater for the frigid times.  This can discourage being there when I don't need to be.

OOB has a daytime purpose, whether for patients recovering from illness or myself trying to get the most out of my waking times.  How well the restrictions I accepted for myself played out in my senior years gets a mixed scorecard.  Restricted bed times effectively creates a box of time when the bed is off limits.  Productive time is the intent: some creative, some challenging, some maintenance of ordinary household tasks.  That requires other specified times.  Prime time, the mornings, at my desk.  Focus time, another struggle.  Appointments:  doctors, shabbos services, OLLI.  Things to do that have no assigned times:  grocery shopping, laundry.  Habitual activities:  meal preparation, hygiene.   And dead times, mostly driving to where I need to go.  The assigned bedtimes have the purpose of supporting the waking times.  For the most part, my adherence has enabled that, as the sleep hygiene experts suggested it would.

As a result, this remains a priority.  How I feel when my clock radio sounds mostly becomes subordinate to my promise to myself to get up, even it requires a snooze in the lounge chair later.  At 9:30PM, screens go off in anticipation of lights out a half hour later.  Assigned times have only a loose correlation with physiological realities, but close enough to respect them in anticipation of a future benefit.  And with this effort, I still feel reasonably spry as my years advance.

Faulty Sukkah

My Jewish attachments have many beneficial non-negotiables, or at least minimally negotiables. I follow dietary restrictions.  My weekly Shabbat has its protocols that shut down some of the urgencies of the other days.  The Jewish calendar mandates seasons, usually in the form of Festivals.  Each has its joys, some its burdens.  Passover foods, the Omer Count, a dairy meal challenge for Shavuot, and uncomfortable Tisha B'Av in midsummer, the assembly of people not seen in a while for the Holy Days, the Sukkah that follows, festivities of Hanukkah, fruits of Tu B'Shvat, and the merriment of Purim.  Most challenge me in some way, whether creating a dinner, cleaning house, learning a liturgy portion, or simply being in shul when that's not my preferred destination.

Physical demands only come twice.  Preparing my house for Pesach requires multiple trips between my home's first floor and the basement, mostly to bring sometimes heavy boxes of stored dishes and cookware upstairs, then back down again at the Festival's conclusion.  Washing them can be tedious but preparing the food glorious.  Sukkot requires me to build a sukkah, a flimsy transient structure with a few requirements to make the structure valid.  That Festival is in progress.

Building our sukkah has gone through a few transformations over many years, but having one for our family, and usually for guests, has become one of those non-negotiables.  These structures vary considerably in durability, though none intended to be durable, and in effort required to assemble them.  Mine has transformed from one of wooden beams and cloth walls to a more commercial frame of rust-resistant steel pipes connected by plumbing joints.  A skin of canvas then gets placed around the frame, held in place by bungee anchors inserted into grommets and wrapped around the steel tubes.

The sukkah's validity is established by its roof.  Traditionally, that must come from branches, mostly evergreens, sometimes parts of corn stalks, not always readily available.  The commercial kits, which we use in recent years, have a series of wooden slats that get rolled out over the steel tubing.  The fit could be better.

As my wife and I enter our senior years, the physical capacity to assemble this has waned.  It requires a step ladder, which I have, but which has weathered over decades.  The tubes do not always fit securely into the joints.  Always a two-person job.  And placing the prefab roof atop the frame exposes the limitations of its construction which leaves little leeway for lapses in placement.  I found the branches easier to place, though harder to find.  

And then we have weather, once assembled.  The structure resembles a box kite.  Over the years, brisk winds of the noreaster season have displaced ours.  This year the winds created a topless sukkah, no longer in conformity with the rules of construction.  

Construction has taken a toll on me.  While coping with medial knee pain through physical therapy, the ups and downs of the step ladder, the need to reposition myself to insert tubing into joints, thread the bungees through the grommets, and balance the wooden roof onto the frame has challenged my physical therapy progress.  NSAIDs have gone from PRN to q12h with some benefit, but not enough to postpone orthopedic assessment.

While having my own sukkah has been a seasonal non-negotiable, the toll it has taken requires me to reconsider.  I could hire a handyman and direct him.  Or with some luck, the ortho folks can restore my knee, though they cannot reverse some other aging features that hint maybe a ladder creates too much risk.  Communal sukkahs trace to antiquity, suggesting that individual ones so common in suburbia many have in another era exceeded the financial ability and physical capacity of our ancestors.  This year's effort brings me to a branch point, figuratively and literally.  The sukkah will come down more easily than it went up.