Selective Languishing

Since Languishing became an identifiable entity with its fifteen minutes in the spotlight, my identification  with its features have been obvious.  I wonder, though, whether the scholars that pursue this will need to refine how they describe it, what its underpinnings might be, and how they potential reversals might be circumstance dependent.

I think languishing might be compartmentalized.  Our congregational President offered us a chance to contribute to his upcoming performance discussion with our Rabbi.  He does not seem to take performance enhancing drugs, but when you look at the elements of contractual job description, all boxes would get checked.  Certificate of Successful Fulfillment of the contract can be signed without hesitation, yet when I am in their sanctuary I languish Jewishly and I taught myself to minimize being at other activities to avoid a similar ennui.  Other things that I do such as treadmill progress or expressing myself in various forums or making a special dinner in my kitchen defend against this feeling.  I don't really have to subject myself to synagogue.  Others don't really have the option of avoidance when the impediments of work or family obligations or financial anxieties overtake those more satisfying elements of their lives.  Languishing then becomes more global than selective, more like the malignancy that started local but eventually metastasizes everywhere.

For now, if I experience languishing at all, which I once clearly did, it remains in selective compartments not totally avoidable. My challenge may be to provide a moat between the things that energize me and those that drag me.  I probably can.

Visiting Chesapeake City

Needed a brief escape, preferably one that fulfilled my Semiannual Goal of three visits to new places in Maryland.  Some impediment by locking myself out of my house for the first time in forty years, but a neighbor found her spare key and off I went.  Some alone time in the car is always welcome.  Scout GPS worked well, taking me to the few turns uneventfully.  The Delaware side seemed amply developed, the Maryland side less so.  While I had intended to tour the C&D Canal Museum, it only opens on weekends.  Crossing the canal explained why.  The town of Chesapeake City MD lives off its marina, with various pleasure craft moored there for its prosperous owners to enjoy time on the water each weekend.  Not many places to eat, some niche boutiques, though far less than what I found on a similar day trip to Frenchtown NJ last year.  Said hello to the shop owners, almost bought something.   Had a simple lunch, then headed home.  Semiannual task can be marked complete.

While in the neighborhood, I had to pass Costco to get home, so this would be a chance to see if they had any cargo pants, the last replacement clothing I still needed to get.  They didn't.  However, to get back to the highway, I had to drive past Cabela's.  Cargo pants are most useful for sports where you need to keep your hands free.  They had something suitable, which I purchased, to be altered next week when I pick up the pants already at the cleaners to be hemmed.  Then my replacement boat shoes should arrive and my upgraded wardrobe for summer will have been completed.

Mostly a Me Day.  I need a few Me Days.

Moving Boxes

One or two round trips to the basement at a time will eventually get all the Passover stuff back into storage for another year.  Everything is now boxed and labelled.  Next comes a strategy.  One heavy or bulky, then one trip with two lighter boxes.  Maybe bring up some chametz on the way upstairs, though only the stand mixer and food processor remains and won't be needed before Mother's Day.  Having Pesach boxes in the dining room to be moved annoys me more than it challenges me, so a slow but steady pace until done.

Seeking Flow

Our screens have largely fragmented our time, or worse, usurped it.  Amid that sink that diverts us from doing what we should be doing, people still manage to get absorbed in worthwhile activities.  Books get written, science insights accumulate, art gets painted, and movies made.  Some things we do because we get satisfaction from doing them.

I have a few of these too.  To my surprise, as I benefit from better dedication to the treadmill, my sessions become more of a challenge and less of a burden.  I express myself because it gives me satisfaction to do it irrespective of how any recipient reacts.  Once the barrier of activation energy gets overcome, I write my Medscape articles each month for the challenge of writing them. For some things, the activity is its own reward.  Whether I ever really achieve FLOW is open to question, but for all the programmed allure of social media, it is never really at the top of the list of things I want to do.

What the flow activities seem to require, though, are specified times to set aside other distractions to enter the world of exercise, thinking, writing, or even driving.  Then the activity, along with the desire to do it at that time, feeds on itself.  

As much as the dot.com enterprises research and implement the optimal ways to draw our undivided attention, the best they can come out is second.

Get Outside More

Ready to move summer clothing from storage to bedroom in exchange for winter clothing spending dormant time until the fall.  While I want to get another pair of khaki cargo pants which are rather versatile, and need to get some chinos hemmed, I have pretty much what I need, once my new boat shoes arrive.  Clothing has a purpose.  Short sleeves and short pants are to primarily get me into the sunshine or reduce some of the recreational deprivation that I've experienced.  Maybe fishing.  Maybe drawing outside.  The beach. Visiting places. Helping the gardens thrive.  Someplace other than My Space, while an alluring destination, has become too dominant.

Too Much SSRI Methinks

Drug holiday may be prudent.  But which one?  I don't feel quite right.  Tired a lot, sleeping more, less motivated but emotionally blunted.  Experiences that should have made me ecstatic haven't.  Experience that should have initiated outrage haven't.  My ability to focus and learn new things has waned, more noticeable to me than to anyone else.

My pill case has five tablets, each taken at suppertime.  Two are antihypertensives, one an SSRI, one a statin and one a PPI.  The PPI was stopped a few days, having run out.  I got heartburn. No mental improvement.  My BP has been excellent of late.  Calcium channel blockers can do this, ACE inhibitor unlikely.  Most likely I have a cumulative effect of the SSRI.  Two week drug suspension  and reassess.

Extra AM Snooze

I follow classic health rules with better compliance now that I've retired.  Exercise on schedule in a programmed amount, avoid unrestrained eating, sleep on schedule, take my scheduled medicines.  All has gone well with setbacks resulting in feeling pretty good as a senior citizen.  Lapses occur, most of them rationalized in some way, but not many.  Physical health good, emotional health less good, with loneliness at times and languishing at others, with a few uplifts thrown in.  I've done better with physical advice than the mental hygiene advice of immersing myself among others.

Unusual event this morning, though.  My iTouch watch buzzed me awake.  Felt OK.  Dental care done.  This being Pesach, I do not bring coffee into My Space like I usually do early in the morning.  Not having another good reason to go downstairs, I plopped myself into the recliner that serves as the My Space centerpiece.  Within minutes I nodded off for another two hours.  Then downstairs for coffee.  My morning got time shifted a bit.  Fortunately it's a scheduled day off from the treadmill.  When sleep physiology functions that way, it's probably some correction of my own misunderstandings.

Dealing with Failures

My first week of my newly advanced age could have gone better.  Spent that first week wobbly, perhaps orthostatic.  My daughter came from Oakland for my birthday and Passover, which is always a treat, though with a few elements of strain woven into an overwhelming fabric of pride.  I could not do treadmill.  Pesach preparation took its toll.  I committed myself to submitting two decent articles to editors, both promptly rejected.  Missed my only OLLI session of the semester, partly from logistics of Passover and daughter visit, partly from fatigue, partly from marginal interest.  My nurtured indoor starter plants all fizzled when I put them out into the sunshine.  I even stopped keeping a daily list of projects I planned to do each day.  Tough week.  Not cheerful.

But the cycles of nature go on.  Next birthday less than another year away with prospects for recapturing the path to fulfillment, if not pleasure.  I still have the articles to revise for another purpose.  Returned to the treadmill and my full goal intensity after the week's layoff.  Pesach on autopilot mostly.  Daily list back in action.  I can buy vegetable starters from the local nursery.  Still not restored to cheerful, but not despondent either.  Probably emerging from a week's languis

hing.  

Woozy Birthday

Threescore and ten was so Last Year.  Moving along, another year with achievements and restraints completed.  Overall, I've been feeling well relative to my age.  Some exercise tradeoffs with sore legs in exchange for better stamina.  My new memory has limitations notable primarily to me alone, not incapacitating.  I can be focused.  I can sometimes be funny.  Struggling to come up regularly cheerful, though.  And very much tempered in my quest for new experiences.

My birthday itself found me a little woozy.  Sleep deprived overnight after making admirable progress with Sleep Hygiene.  Difficulty giving my OLLI class my undivided attention.  Just forgot a major component of my Passover shopping task while at Shop-Rite.  Nice dinner.  Some greetings via FB.  Yet a lot of time in the recliner in My Space.  Now onto the next personal earth orbit, the last one in which I can leave my IRAs dormant.  And it begins with feeling better.

Spring Clothing Update

While traveling home from our tax preparer with a big IRS check to write, but also a big nominal income, my wife and I chatted about how we spend money, which is frugally.  There is little that I need, not a whole lot that I want.  I stopped separating $5 bills received in change in part because I now exchange little enough cash to accumulate many and rarely spend what I have put in semiannual envelopes.

In the spring, though, I tend to take stock of clothing.  Again, I need very little.  My tan moccasins have worn out.  So have one pair of tan chinos and one pair of black ones.  I've not had cargo pants for a few years, but found the pockets useful, so I should replace that.  And my go-to belt still holds up pants but has its inner surface largely abraded away.  Have plenty of shirts, shorts, socks.  Found a pair of exercise shoes that have another year in them, so I do not have to replace the treadmill shoes.  All local teams represented by my t-shirts and baseball caps.

Shoes are hardest to replace due to an infrequently ordered size, but between Amazon and Zappos I found a somewhat better pair of moccasins than I usually purchase.  Pants online was more difficult.  Found the two chinos and a belt at Boscov's.  Deferred on the cargo pants, my size did not have my preferred color, and I haven't had a pair for quite a few years so not really needed, or even highly desired.

It's off to the tailor for hemming.  Then transfer the summer clothing from storage.

Resupplied, though no place to go where I need to look stylish, or even successful.

Full Whiteboard

Pesach usually presents me with activity. Most is finite with deadlines so it gets done.  Shopping, cleaning, exchanging and washing dishes, Seder, services.  Add Torah reading to the list this year.  That's a full week in its own right.  And my birthday comes during this week which my family likes to acknowledge in some way.  My daughter opted to come for birthday and Seder which is great but with some airport obligations.  And it's been a while since I've scheduled platelet donation.  While I might get turned away again as my Hb hovers at the Blood Bank's cutoff, I still have to get there.  And OLLI sessions, one on-site.  

Taxes done.  Financial record keeping and donations and Medscape next week.  

On Sunday's, to keep my wife and I from asking too much of each other, fixed obligations go on a Whiteboard, which looks mostly full.  I could reschedule the platelet donation, not a lot of flexibility to anything else.  

IRS Windfall

Our CPA did the numbers.  We did very well on paper, taking in more than enough from Social Security and my wife's monthly pension deposit to have some left over after expenses.  Nothing extravagant in the last year other than having to replace my car.  That left funds in storage, largely mutual funds, which the financial geeks traded frequently and successfully.  As they reaped profits, they purchased something else they thought would appreciate, raising the nominal value of our holdings.  The downside, as partial owners, we get to pay the capital gains taxes on the profits without really having the proceeds themselves.  Thus our tax preparer conveyed a very large obligation that we had to the IRS both for this year's filing and for estimated taxes in the coming year.  All this without being able to indulge in our share of these successful trades.

Fortunately our tax deferred assets remain immune from this for another two years, just growing in value, assuming the managers of those funds are as astute as the stock pickers of our taxable funds.

OLLI Live

For logistical reasons, when I had the option of attending a particular Osher class live or by Zoom, I defaulted to the screen because it preceded another course that was only available electronically.  Now that short course concluded I had a choice again.  Since the instructor was a premier lecturer and expert I thought it better to attend in person, even though it meant leaving my house a little earlier and driving about twenty minutes each way, in addition to filling out forms for safety when I arrived on site.  Major disappointment to say the least.  Basically a talking head with slides.  While assigned the largest lecture room in the building, probably less than twenty seats were occupied, compared to about twice that by the weekly Zoom count.  The class reminded me a bit of a C-SPAN class taught at a college where the kids pay while I watch for free, though without graduation credit.  To my great disappointment there were no questions other than me going up to the professor at the end.  At least at an Endocrine Society mass lecture, where people sit far enough from the podium to have to watch on screens strategically distributed in a cavernous ballroom, microphones are distributed and time allotted for audience queries and responses.  This lecture I could have watch just as well on my laptop.

As pandemic dangers wane, some choices will need to be made.  Isolation forced us to use visual electronics for medical care, learning, some recreation, and conducting business.  We've actually had some of that for a long time, whether it might be better to see a sports or cultural event live or to watch the broadcast.  Or sitting in a big lecture hall or small classroom.  A concert sounds more authentic live.  A football game I'm less sure, as the cameras can focus on the most important action, though much can be said about being among thousands of your community members surrounding you rooting for the same team as you.  It makes you part of that community, something a TV screen cannot.

For school, live has emerged as better, as the interaction seems as essential to learning as seeing the content of what needs to be learned.  Indeed, we've always done homework or studied for exams solo but exchanged the spectrum of perspectives live.  Medical care also has its pluses and minuses remotely.  Exams, patient reactions do better live.  But we've always supplemented that with telephone.  The screen becomes more of a replacement than a supplement.  It allows tapping into experts from afar, something our Talmudic sages looked askance at, but very useful for those with frustrating conditions that require unique levels of expertise.  Most conditions don't.

Still, it was helpful to learn what our electronics can and cannot do.  They do not seem to be able to expand conversation.  We probably learned that pre-pandemic from our social media or the earliest days of AOL chat rooms.  They can make global experts available irrespective of geography, as we learned early in the pandemic when venerable agencies sponsored free lectures with levels of expertise not previously accessible to most of us.  But for ordinary interactions, the verdict on electronic participation seems more mixed.  It is fine, even preferable, for my talking head class, as it has been for watching lectures pre-recorded for C-SPAN.  This is how I will attend the rest of that course.

Langishing

Most days I seek out a TED talk, stumbling across that of a Wharton professor who described me quite well as a person who has been languishing for much of the pandemic, if not before.  He noted his NY Times article in the talk, so I read that afterwards, this time not blocked for lack of a subscription.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html

The pandemic has taken me through stages, depending on what I had to do or wanted to do.  For a while I probably met medical criteria for loneliness, though less so now.  I don't think I was ever despondent but often without purpose and hard to get motivated to leave My Space for more purposeful activity.  I did not feel sad or angry, even when I should have.  More numb or Stoic.

The talk and article, which the author had experienced, outlined remedies, some of which I had begun to figure out before understanding what had overcome me.  He advocated finding activities that had three features.

• MASTERY 
• MINDFULNESS 
• MATTERS

For him, that came from assembling family time to play a video game with relatives in other cities.  For me some of what has made me feel a little better has been my success at maintaining a treadmill schedule.  I now exercise at a level not possible when I made the commitment to do it.  I remain inner focused on a tune, with scheduled glances at a preset timer.  And I would like to feel more energetic, so the effort matters.

My self-expression has not gone as well, meeting mindfulness and matters, but not yet with the mastery.  In fact, it's still a project overdue in its formation.  I do very well responding to what others have conveyed, not nearly as well assembling and expressing my own thoughts or experiences.  It's also not yet Flow, that effortless feeling which keeps me focused on nothing else.  I still work with a timer, as I do with the treadmill, and have gotten better at not watching it, though not as well at letting it run to zero to define each session.  But it does capture the three M's.

He did not talk about giving up situations that promote languishing, for me the sanctuary of my synagogue on Saturday morning.  It currently and for a while has lacked all three M's, a place at which mastery is neglected, I'm not offered anything of importance to do or creativity to accomplish, and end results that do not seek to generate the excellence that really matters.  I do have a more challenging assignment for Pesach which may help.

Now that I have a better grasp of where my psyche has taken me and the better places it could be, I should be able to at least move in the direction of Flow, if not actually achieve it.

Try the Recliner

A melatonin misadventure.  After several Shabbos afternoons of chemically prodded escape, half snooze, half stupor from chewing a 1.5 mg melatonin tablet, I thought I might try taking it the way it was intended for sleep.  So at twilight, I gave myself a head start with the tablet, got a little drowsy but not sleepy, and entered bed at the usual time.  I read a bit.  However, I did not fall asleep, which I likely would have from doing nothing but following the buzz on my iTouch watch.  

After no progress in a reasonable time, I headed to my trusty lounge chair in My Space, setting the TV to a pretty good show about bears.  Watched a while, dozed off for I don't know how long but eventually awoke to the modern version of Test Patterns that Netflix displays when the show has concluded without any remote commands for something else.  Back to bed.  Not for very long.  Back to recliner and an attempt to resume the show on bears where I think I nodded out.  Again to the end, clearly drowsy.  Bed got another go, a partially restful one but not for that long.  Back to the chair where the appointed time the wrist buzzer alerted me.  Not ready to get up, despite my commitment to following the dictates of that signal.  Arising only delayed about twenty minutes, then on to morning routine, not feeling particularly sleep-deprived but not in hot anticipation of the day's opportunities either.  Coffee as the next guiding chemical.

Week of Expression

Now halfway through my semi-annual cycle. Mostly progressing well except for inadequate verbal expression.  My OLLI courses are not at all interactive, mostly talking heads or Great Courses.  I set time to write, start but don't seem satisfied with what I've expressed. Focus on that this week, along with getting set for Pesach.

Not Cheerful

It had been my hope, if not expectation, that intercession from OLLI with a brief vacation would leave me more uplifted than it has.  Indeed, my level of cheer may have reversed a notch or two.  Upon returning home, I've been sleeping more, doing something productive only by appointment with myself to do something.  I've not gotten outdoors, but have been faithful to treadmill resumption.

Events loom.  Birthday, visit from my daughter, Passover, scholarship applications to review for the Delaware Community Foundation, garden planting, all of which should prod my mood, or at least make me feel more accomplished.  Maybe as I get more immersed in doing them they will.

Resuming

Back from some minor DC tourism.  Saw early cherry blossoms, more white than pink, but a lot of them.  Many iconic buildings, national treasures in architecture and in heritage.  Some working buildings too, but hardly anyone who works in them.  And sites open to the international public.  Only went into the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, where I could spend many hours gazing at what they have and admiring the people whose knowledge and insight teased out the meaning of now extinct animals and the chemical compositions of crystals.  And hardly saw a smidgen of what they had displayed.

Some parts of culture too.  Lunch trucks, a sculpture garden, zero MAGA hats.

Now resuming my routines, perhaps slightly more tired than I expected to be.  Treadmill, Pesach prep, tidying interior spaces, crosswords, OLLI classes.  Thought I might be more eager to return to purposeful activity after the short respite, but maybe as OLLI resumes in the coming week, the customary routines will follow.