Finding Stuff

Tackling some big stuff.  Making My Space into my Man Cave.  Clearing my closets.  Making my kitchen the place that gives me joy.  Progress with all three.  It's unfathomable that when I moved into my house it had no stuff other than the stove required by law.  And when I eventually have to vacate it at end of life, somebody will have to divest of what has accumulated.  They need a head start.  

My mind is one that automatically sorts things.  Professionally, I would look at all the X-Rays, then create a block of time for consults, then another block of time to dictate reports.  Conceptual boxes.  In my physical spaces, I have real boxes.  As I took stuff off the floor to make My Space functional, I took mostly medium-sized cartons and sorted.  Not always in the wisest way.  Stuff suitable for desk work, irrespective of whether I might ever use these things, tools, bolts, stuff belonging to my wife, stuff belonging to my son.  I did similar in the bedroom.  A box for things that are mine, another for my wife, another for grooming things, another for health.  Then subcategories, which I did in My Space this week, mostly in sandwich or snack bags with resealable tops.  I had forgotten having once done this in the bedroom until I entered a box and found a plastic bag with pocket knives, another with combs.  As I go through My Space, I find similar treasures.  Things for sewing belong in the very functional three tiered sewing box I keep in the bedroom.  I found lint brushes.  More combs.  Stuff suitable for storage in one of my three travel kits.  I dedicated a box for stamps and post cards.  Another for rocks harvested at a variety of vacation sites.  More unused loose leafs than will fit into boxes.  And I have ample clear plastic bags, some large that once contained comforters or curtains, others smaller but still with snaps or zippers.  And cloth bags of all types, some of felt that housed jewelry, some canvas totes in a variety of sizes.  Harvested three more unused marble notebooks, probably costing 50 cents each at back to school sales, and packets of loose-leaf paper still in their plastic wrappers.

I had the wisdom to start with the closets, a few years ago for My Space, this past month for the bedroom.  So as I place things in boxes or clear plastic bags, all labelled, they can be assigned a rational place.  Some stuff belongs in a different room.  I think the basement is the best repository, at least for tools and hardware.

As I do this sorting, I set a timer, typically an hour, but rarely last more than half that at a single session. My ability to sort seems saturable.  And floor space is at a premium, despite the intent of maximizing it.  But slow and steady eventually transforms from progress to completion.

Stuff We Should Eat

Being a physician, now retired, in a specialty that inherits people whose primary doctors could not get them to goal, I acquired both a fondness and respect for what prescription writing could do.  And while these medicines extend life, people too often could have avoided some of the diabetic and cardiac problems that they ask their doctors to reverse by eating more selectively.  Along with the prescriptions goes some dietary guidance.  Unfortunately, diets don't do very well once a chronic illness has been declared, though can delay onset of many conditions that have not yet appeared.  Moreover, people do pretty well taking what is prescribed, particularly when a visit to a specialist hints at serious.  But what we eat, in a world where UPC codes offer millions of products, have inputs far stronger than their doctors'.  We have preferences established long before we made our own food choices.  And food supply in America is really one of those Modern Marvels, employing farmers, chemists who make sure that their company's version has just the right sweetness, merchant marines, and those clever people who have to design the supermarket circular each week based on deals the chain market's purchasing agents are able to secure.

Each Thursday, a small collection of grocery circulars arrives in the mail.  I extract the one from my preferred megamart, the one with a Kosher meat section and nearly all products that could be Kosher containing a certification mark.  Then by the following Monday, I have poured over each column of each page, with a note pad and pen to my right.  On the front of the pad, I write down what I must get, either because I know my current supply needs replenishing, or because the ad has something that I will use during the coming week.  On the reverse side of the pad's page, a much longer list is generated.  It contains items so alluring that I must consider them irrespective of need.  Perhaps a discount on something I will eventually use.  Perhaps I can use that discount as a starter to make something a little different than originally planned.  Then on Sunday, I load the digital coupons and cut with scissors those usually very significant price reduction coupons that prove to the grocery's big honchos that you really read the flyer they paid through the nose to have the USPS deliver to every household.

Enticing people to shop there instead of someplace else as gotten ever more sophisticated.  So it came as a bit of a surprise last week when the marketers threw me and everyone else a bit of a curveball.  Instead of the big price reductions assigned to stuff that people gravitate to, those processed foods that people overeat, then try to hide from their medical provider at the next visit, this week's ad contained all those things on the medical preferred eat list.  Produce of all types:  apples, pears, cantaloupe, mushrooms, Roma tomatoes, baby carrots.  Frozen vegetables, the perfect kind for small households like mine.  Several species of fish, now flash frozen at the time of harvest, either from a farm or at sea.  Yogurts.  Some meat substitutes.  Bottled water and seltzer.  More importantly, the snack foods, soda, sugar, flour, even coffee, frozen pizza, those items on the maybe consider avoiding this list were all selling at full price, maybe even significant inflation related increases.  And since we have UPC codes, some analyst in a remote location will know quite soon whether people can be prodded to eat in a healthier way by nudges from weekly supermarket advertising.

Or maybe our candidates from office will hear about this differently.  The stuff they really want, those cookies, chips, frozen pizzas now all cost too much.  And they want the medical care needed to mitigate damage to cost less too.

But for me, I now have a little more fresh produce on my menu than I might have otherwise had, while those temptations for gluttonous after supper goodies that may as well be served in a feed bag, designed by expert processors who know our desire for these has no limits, have at least a week's deferral from my cart.

Doing the Noodgies

My Daily Task List has its share of items that repeat, even some that reflect Semi-Annual projects.  There is always an excuse to put certain things off, that evil of procrastination.  I'm not lazy, nor are most people who keep deferring what they ought to be doing.  Sometimes these postponed activities really are less important than the ones actively pursued.  Often they have no deadline beyond what is self-imposed.  Invariably there is no immediate adverse consequence to neglecting them. And sometimes they are ignored for the right reason, as in not really part of essential personal objectives.  Whatever the reason, legit, psychological, laziness, these tasks never really exit the Daily Task List, which functions in the manner of a Roach Motel, checking in but never checking out.  They are often noodgie things, stuff that will bring satisfaction, sometimes even important, but often tedious to do.  And sometimes there is a fear, mostly legit, of what will be disclosed once pursued.

Because of this, I designated today to tackle those repetitive items on my Daily Task List that have long overstayed their welcome.

As usual, I created this day's list from my weekly objectives, which are the action elements of my Semi-Annual personal goals.  I then circled in red, the items which had been neglected too long.

1. Read a news article clipped from the paper but not read for weeks since its publication.
2. Submit an op-ed I had written a few weeks ago which depended on my understanding that article.
3. A Committee that I recently joined asked me to do something.
4. I've not opened the Recreation Case that I created months ago. It's a canvas attaché where I keep art and drawing supplies mostly.
5. Spend an evening with my wife.
6. Track down my aging step-mother, my father's widow, who had some phone number changes.
7. Speak to my attorney on a lingering matter.
8. Outline the novel that will make me famous, or maybe the subject should be its non-fiction theme.
9. Start writing a paragraph or two to confirm I am serious about authoring an 80K word work.
10. Decide what car repairs should be done soon and which can wait.
11. Get my snowblower functional before the next coating, on a day unseasonably warm but damp.

Each item on my list for weeks, some longer.  Each repetitively pre-empted by something else for the right reason, or my psyche imposing avoidance for the wrong reason.

So how'd I do?

Read the article.  Even tried to nominate the article for a local reporting Pulitzer.  Deadline for nomination tonight.  I did not know how to use the form and really didn't want to pay the $75 submission form, so I wrote to the newspaper's editor and asked him to consider dealing with the Pulitzer possibility.

Deferred submitting op-ed to next week, to see if the editor-in-chief responds to me first.

Probably better to do the committee work when I go on site in two weeks.

Drew a pear with my drawing pencil.

Wife time after supper

Stepmother tomorrow.  Found the most recent phone numbers.

Spoke to attorney for 20 minutes.  He reassured my worst fears.

Started the novel outline but spent less time on it than allotted by my timer.

So not a bad effort considering these are the things I have avoided the most.  And I still had some time for reading the things I read each day, posting on restricted social media, reconnecting with a friend or two, taking care of a bank errand, slicing the cantaloupe I bought yesterday, doing the scheduled treadmill and stretch, going out for coffee, reviewing some commentaries on the upcoming Torah portion. 

Write when my outline is further along.

Chose the repairs.  Schedule them tomorrow

Too damp for snowblower repair, which needs to take place outside.

There will always be projects that for the right or wrong reasons, I just don't care to do.  But I did a lot of them by assigning a day, and even designated times within the day to set aside the more attractive efforts to place some of the others as rediscovered.  There is something very gratifying to do some of these things, even when their appearance on successive Daily Task Lists drags indefinitely.  And the stuff that I usually gravitate to, those Semi-Annual initiatives, did not get seriously neglected from a one day diverted effort.  

Notifications

My typical morning, excluding shabbos, begins with a screen once the preliminaries of dental care, newspaper retrieval, and a k-cup brew have been completed.  Restrict Social Media appears on my Daily Task List essentially automatically.  And I really do limit my access, though from time to time I will concentrate on either FB or r/Judaism as a personal focus.  But once coffee has been placed within reach of my laptop in My Space, I seek my notifications.  There are five:  emails, FB, Reddit, Twitter now Rated X, and my stats on Medium Daily Digest.  There's a habit to this, though an ambivalent one.  As Loneliness becomes rampant, with our devices as prime villains, there is a certain irony to the first connection to other people each morning should come from how people responded to us on our screens. Designers of these platforms, including psychology majors, have as their business models the attention time to their offerings preferentially to competitors' options.  And they helped create Loneliness so they know which crumbs to toss to offer a very transient reprieve.

All five forums for me are a little different.  Email is by far the most important, though very few messages come from people I know or from organizations I asked to contact me.  Still, there is frequently something from my wife or financial advisor that needs action.  Some of the passive notifications I solicited indirectly, whether notifications from the synagogue, receipts for payments that I made electronically, subscriptions of various types.  And then there are the unwelcome, transferred to spam, deleted without opening, unsubscribed after opening, or more often than not, just not opened.  And on occasion I will also find a notification that somebody else on another forum responded to a comment I had made on that other platform.

Next most important, though probably expendable, is Facebook.  It has taken an ugly transformation in the fourteen years since I subscribed.  FB's initial attraction was to reconnect with old friends and relatives.  Being some forty years past HS graduation, there was a not entirely healthy curiosity about where the decades had taken the people I once interacted with daily in the classroom, school bus, or gym class.  Most volunteered what they were up to.  I became closer to some that first year on FB than I was in HS, even got to see a few.  After establishing about a hundred FB style quasi-Friends, the number of contacts atrophied one or two at a time.  The nominal connections are still there if I ask for my Friends List, but the number of people who post in a way that reaches my daily passive screen has dwindled to just a few.  It has been replaced by algorithms, computer matches which my own keyboard use helps generate, or a perhaps degenerate, which then post things people want to sell me, donations I might like to consider for either causes or candidates, or updates on my preferred teams.  The real people no longer offer short posts about their lives or what they do, other than photos of destinations they are visiting as they visit them.  Still, every morning I can count on an icon that appears designed after the Liberty Bell with a red number next to it.  Open the bell, and I will get a summary of who liked something I had posted or commented upon. In a world of mostly Zero Responses, these are rarely zero.  And the Likes or related emotions nearly all originate with somebody I know personally.  Moreover, somebody on occasion exchanges an idea.

My Reddit feed differs a bit.  Anonymity is built into the platform and it is moderated for propriety, usually successfully.  Like FB, it has a Liberty Bell with a number attached to it.  However, it is a more multifunctional bell than FB's.  It does not ding for each like, but instead milestones of likes:  5, 10. 25. 50. That's as high as I've gotten, though I'm confident others have gone viral with the bell reflecting that.  It notifies me in duplicate when anyone has verbally responded to a comment that I have made.  One number appears next to the bell with a link to take me to the faux conversation, another notification is directed to my email Inbox.  And then there are unsolicited rings of the bell, comments that their algorithm personalizes to me, thinking I might want to read them, though I am not a participant in that Subreddit.  The bell gives me two options, other than going to that conversation.  I can delete the comment, my most typical response.  Or I can ask for no more notifications from that entire Subreddit, which I also do less frequently.  And while my preferred destination is r/Judaism, when I log on I get a Home feed with a lot of other topics other than my personal subscriptions.  Depending on interest, I will respond to some, an invitation to more notifications from that group, even though I am not enrolled in it.

While I do not know anyone on Reddit by platform design, I am quite helpful to a lot of other posters seeking knowledge and experience.  People come testing the waters of Judaism.  They are attending synagogue for the first time, maybe have let their connection to Judaism become dormant and would like to revive it.  We have guests from the Christian and Islamic world who wish to pose a polite question.  Being helpful to somebody else is one of the best defenses to established Loneliness, something Reddit enables far more than any other forum to which I subscribe.  And in some ways the comments, which are not length restricted, can be developed into forms of conversation.

The most problematic forum is Twitter, that public cesspool of ideas which unfortunately also had people of real public influence present in some way.  There are not many ways to give feedback to a journalist, elected official, top executive, or major scholar.  All generate hundreds of responses.  I know almost nobody personally, though many by reputation and by their public presence.  Likes are few, maybe one every few days, and rarely from the person of public prominence.  What I find, though, is that somebody of obscurity will read my comment and opt to follow me further.  These people, when their profiles are accessed, will typically be following 4000 people but have under 100 who follow them.  By contrast, I follow 37 and have 34 who have chosen to follow me. I cannot think of a more overt identification of Loneliness than seeking anyone who comes along randomly while attractiven nobody else in return.  I almost never initiate a political post, mostly share something I've written on my feed.  I've also deleted many a public figure, including some who have the most to say.  The reason, they post something every ten minutes through their waking hours.  And it arrives in my feed as clutter, since they say pretty much the same predictable things for every one of those q ten minute posts.  As a result, my time of that forum is severely rationed.  My most common Follow is The Atlantic, to which I have a subscription, and most common comment is a response to an article I have read there.  Responses in return have been minimal.  

Finally, I self-publish fifteen or so articles each year on Medium, which comes across as a daily digest.  While a freeloader, I have a handful of people who subscribe to my feed, and a small handful of people who read what I have written, or at least open the article.  While never a lot, there is always a measure of gratification to contributing to somebody else's mind.  I do not know these people and get close to zero comments in return.  But it takes only moments each morning to check.

So knowing how I relate, or really how my mind relates to people known and unknown, has an allure that seems difficult to set aside, though I do set it aside for Shabbos every Saturday.  I'm part of cyberspace.  The magnates who control cyberspace want me as part of it, which is more than I can say for people I know in person or through organizations who have done their best to exclude me.  It does not take a lot to feel included.  Mostly a bell shape on a screen with a single digit in red next to it.

Did Nothing

Snow shoveling left me sore.  Two days this past week, spread over three sessions.  One effort to clear the small ridge deposited by the street plow.  Not a lot of snow, as much pushing as lifting.  But maybe not something a senior citizen should be doing, even if paced.  I gave myself credit for an exercise session in lieu of the scheduled treadmill.  

The following day, a Sunday, treadmill hiatus day, I took off.  Not catch-up.  Idle.  As every Sunday morning, I mapped out my week, a very long list of activities I aspire to tackling.  Then a much shorter list of activities for Sunday, most doable at my upstairs desk in My Space.  I did next to none of these.  Washed milchig dishes.  Retrieved the Sunday paper from the driveway to the front door for my wife. Descaled the Keurig Express-Mini as the guy on YouTube recited the instructions.  Made an Aunt Jemima or less offensive new brand pancake for breakfast.  More coffee.  Filled my weekly medication cases, AM and PM.

Over the course of the day, I had done no mental activities other than some easy crosswords and responding to some r/Judaism inquiries on Reddit, including as abrasive response on adverse day school assessments which pampered my id in some way.  No housework other than washing milchig dishes.  No Twitter.  No significant meal preparation.  No quest for my highest level of amusement.  No pursuit of my semi-Annual goals, though I did consider places I might like to travel for the OLLI intercession.  No exchanges with old friends.  Not a whole lot that anyone would judge trying to get ahead. 

By mid-afternoon, I felt a little bored so I got in the car, intending roughly the same circuit I would take during the height of the pandemic when all I could do to get away was drive somewhere.  This time I stopped at a department store.  Strolled the upper floor where they have the non-clothing items, with no serious interest in acquiring more stuff.  A half-lap of that floor got me to the escalator.  Despite my herb pots being indoors due to a freeze, newly placed lurid patterned men's swim trunks at premium prices had been placed at the base of the escalator on the first floor.  I guess people are preparing for their cruise or week in the Caribbean.  I'm not.  No tour of the rest of the clothing floor, just a straight path back to my car.

Home in time for NFL Divisional games.  I didn't really want to watch any whole games, just the final quarters.  First game late afternoon, second game after supper.  No particular interest in supper.

I keep two logs that I fill out each evening except Shabbos.  One is a record of Daily Annoyance.  Not doing anything of significance is a good way to not having any personal calamity, though I did slip on the ice sheet outside my front door.  No fall, no injury, but recorded in the log.  The second journal was titled Hakaras HaTov, or Gratitude for Good Things that day.  It really turned out more to a record of three things worthwhile that I achieve each day.  Being purposefully idle, I found it hard to come up with three, but on reflection:

1. I ate a proper breakfast and lunch
2. My remarks of r/Judaism satisfied my id and were helpful to others
3. I arose from bed when the clock said to even if I didn't really want to=

There's always at least three.  The sun always goes down at the time the astronomers predict.  I read my current e-book, three chapters of a classic borrowed from the Hoopla Service offered by the public library.  I do not know when it will have its auto-return.  And watched the score of the Division Playoff on my smartphone.  

After supper, I always outline the following day, which I proceeded to do.  Having done nothing of substance, largely by intent, all Sunday, Monday would have to be a lot different.  Activities to pursue filled three columns.  Some element of my twelve semi-annual projects appears somewhere on this very long to-do list.  It is the day I weigh myself and take a waist circumference.  I have fleishig dishes from shabbos to wash.  It's a scheduled treadmill and stretch day.  Time of the month for financial record keeping.  And some future projects that have deadlines.  The very opposite of my idle day.  And more forced than motivated activity.  I cannot really say my Sunday downtime left me restored for Monday. 

Yet I needed this respite, one day in which I created a Daily Task List as usual but did not get concerned about letting it sit mostly untapped to the right of my laptop while I escaped for one day.

Iggles Collapse

In our fractious times, in a world where we ally with the echo chambers and conflict entrepreneurs of our preference, there are but a few remaining institutions that have a diverse loyalty, if only regional ones.  Sports loyalties often generate shared pride, a commonality of interest that overrides race, religion, wealth, car preference, or preferred candidates.  Usually this centers around a metropolitan area, but in some parts of America the college football or basketball coach is the highest paid public employee in the state, in part because everyone who can attends the college stadium or arena.  But mostly we deal with cities, as the majority of Americans now live within a half day's drive of a place that has a major league affiliate.  My metro area supports Phillies Baseball, Flyer's Hockey, Sixers Basketball, Union Soccer, and the greatest magnet of them all, our Eagles of the NFL.  I looked at what a seat at the Linc for a game would cost.  Above budget.  College football, which has several options including my own alma mater, within budget.  But for big screen TV, the Eagles game always appears.  I have a cable subscription, but with few exceptions anyone with a TV can watch and anyone driving their car can listen on the radio.  I mostly watch, especially when they are doing well or for key games.  For lesser occasions, online access allows updates on scores and visual play by play summaries.  When they do well, as they have in recent years, they are civic heroes.  When they don't, which is recent weeks, they are more like pets who scratched furniture or grabbed scraps off the table when they shouldn't have.  They get berated for a minute or two, but they are still part of our household.

Our Iggles ended their season on a down note.  After winning their first ten of eleven, each noted on my FB feed with a WooHoo and smiling emoji 😀, they faltered big time.  Their victory cushion got them past playoff threshold, though not the expected first seed.  And their season ended with a drubbing in the first post-season game.

Response of the citizens to our communal disappointment takes many forms.  As a physician, I am thoroughly socialized to the medical response to adverse outcomes.  We can and do get sued periodically, but within the medical community the approach is not punitive.  It is analytical and introspective.  What might have given a better outcome, and what changes in process will bring that about?  Most of the modern world, though, seeks a demon to blame.  We see that in our politics, which now targets selected people for impeachment not because of criminality but as a back door to something the voters would not let them have.  CEOs get fired.  Coaches get dismissed.  There is a mostly wrong assumption that the person at the helm lacks the capacity to fix the shortfall.  And that might be true.  Coaches have a lot of absolute authority and are not always receptive to changing what brought them enough success in the past to get them hired to their current team.  They certainly have no shortage of advice.  Any FB post on an Iggles loss, or any other team's loss, will have a hundred comments, mostly from ignoramuses, on what the coach should have done instead.  Of course, this is a lot easier to figure out once the outcome has been declared.  The coaches' crystal balls are not very good at predicting outcomes that are not known.

And then we have underperforming professionals, whether doctors who got a poor result, police officers whose undesired results vary from bad luck to good faith misjudgment to professional misconduct, and athletes who drop the pass they should have caught or fail to tackle the runner before he gets another first down.  Everyone has some snafus.  Sometimes a change in process or additional rehearsal will get a better outcome. And sometimes the talent just doesn't exist.

And in football, injuries often create outcome.  While football is great for spectators to watch because so much strategy and judgment is required for executing optimal team play, the reality is a lot of people get injured in the ordinary course of a game.  Forward advancement of the ball is halted by knocking somebody to the ground.  Helmets are mandatory because they are needed, and still don't prevent chronic traumatic encephalopathy over the course of a career.  Teams engage the best orthopedic experts from their city's most prestigious medical centers.  And before every game, there is a mandatory injury report issued to the public to help gamblers and fans revise their expectations.  There's something a little degenerate about the tolerance of injury as necessary to the final score and final standings, and even the functional longevity of the players.  But it is an accepted component of the sport.  The leagues, college and professional, have taken some measures to enhance the safety of their players, though injury rosters often predict score outcomes.

So our Iggles started 10-1, finished 1-6.  They will mostly watch the rest of the playoffs on their Big Screen TV's, many larger and with more pixels than mine, as their annual income and discretionary spending exceeds mine.  And personnel will shuffle, mostly involuntary.  And the FB pundits of really no skill will opine how their plan would have been better.  And we'll all resume cheering when the preseason commences next summer.

JCC Open House

An invitation arrived around New Year's.  It was addressed to my daughter, who now lives on the other coast.  Since it was a card, front and back, from a public rather than personal source, I read it and found it of potential interest.  It solicited her membership in the Jewish Community Center of her childhood town, noting the date of an Open House to tour the facility.  It would be unrealistic for her to pursue this, though not me.  I had been a member for decades.  Now as a senior empty nester, one who could benefit from their health enhancement facilities, I took the card to my upstairs desk.  Everyplace has a website, including the JCC.  In the promotional initiative, they would waive their various upfront fees assigned to new members.  The monthly fee would be $99 for a senior couple, $67 dollars for myself alone.  Since the YMCA is around the corner from there and has comparable health facilities, I compared pricing. Virtually the same.  And the JCC has Jewish content, though membership in the local Y includes access to any Y, regional or national.  I reserved the date for their Open House, a three hour span from 10AM to 1PM.  That time arrived.  I bundled up for the cold snap, drove to the building, found a suitable parking space in a lot that I thought crowded for a Sunday mid-morning, and headed into the building.

Jewish buildings now require some vigilance on who may enter.  I opened the front door to find their lobby rather busy.  To my right, an affable African American lady at the registration table greeted me promptly and took the information she needed about me on her tablet.  I thought I might have a history, but apparently not.  A few docents were conducting personal guided tours, so one of them found me.

My membership had lapsed with intent many years before.  I remember the circumstances but not the year, only that my children were pretty much starting on their own.  My synagogue began a Capital Campaign.  A solicitor, really two people, a congregant who chaired the effort and a contracted fundraising professional, came to my living room.  They asked for an amount that I had but would rather spend differently.  It was a pledge of $3000 payable over three years.  My wife and I wanted to this to be economically neutral, as our children had not fully completed school.  Membership in the JCC cost about that much, and we had more attachment to the synagogue than to the J, so we diverted the money.  Our pledge got paid on schedule.  We never restored our JCC affiliation.

The experience when I was there was a very mixed one.  They hosted plenty of worthy Jewish events from an Israel Expo shortly after we arrived to town that utilized the entire surface area of the building.  We attended their Adult Ed sessions for many years, a project championed by a senior member of my congregation.  It contained a series of courses conducted by some real experts.  I learned much of what I know of Jewish demographics from the U of D professor who taught this.  But as his ability to assemble this waned, the project collapsed. Each Hanukkah they sponsored their Hanukkah Hoopla, filling the gym's floor space with vendors renting tables, some to sell high end Judaica, others coming as Jewish agencies promoting the value their organizations bring to out Jewish community.  Having an exceptional child who was difficult to mainstream, I often found myself holding the bag as the JCC staff found dealing with him beyond their professional skills, something that generated a fair amount of ill will on my part.  And there were the health and aquatic facilities which I used, sometimes with regularity, often with lapses.  When I had an ankle fracture not long after my forty year parts warranty expired, whose recovery took time, the availability of the JCC resources was useful.  But by the time my membership lapsed, I had become a sporadic user.  The projects that attracted me most had atrophied.  I no longer needed the child services.  Not that I thought my congregation would use its endowment well as the alternative.  It didn't.  But once paid off, I had an extra $1000 or so each year not allocated to anything I didn't particularly value.  Indeed, a small increment in my checking account not really even noticed.

In the intervening years, there are specific events that brought me to the JCC Building, ranging from political pre-election candidate forums to mincha services for my congregation or an occasional public entertainment event or guest speaker of international prominence.  While on site, I just headed where the thing I wanted to attend or sometimes needed to attend was being held.  I never ventured beyond the assigned room or adjacent hallway, other than maybe to sit in the lobby while waiting for the event to commence.  This time I came to see what my monthly fee would purchase.

First, the building is considerably larger than when I left. My guide took me through a hall I had never entered previously on the far eastern wing of the building.  The Fitness Center now occupies a space where the men's locker room had been, greatly expanded by amount of equipment and space devoted to it.  Any imaginable means of increasing endurance and strength could be accessed.  Not only did it appear large, the impression of space was further enhanced by a floor to ceiling mirror on the far wall which reflected the entire room into the visual impression of a duplicate room with identical equipment.  They had energy drinks for purchase.  I did not see the current lockers. She did offer to show me the pool, but I know what pool looks like.  The more important question for a purchaser would be the accessibility of the pool as a finite entity that has to accommodate classes, swim teams, senior water aerobics, dedicated lap swim time, all in competition for random recreational use.  They did supply the aquatics schedule.

While my health as a senior matters, with exercise part of it, I have a home treadmill, though one with much less utility than theirs.  Would I use strength building? Minimally at most.  Would I engage the professional skills of a trainer?  To the extend my monthly fee included that. Would the driving time required to get there and back, approximately the duration of an entire treadmill session, deter me from using the facilities?  I think so.

But what attracted me during my membership years was not the health club, which I used, but the Jewish content which was considerable and the friendships which essentially did not materialize. So as my personal tour guide took me around, my questions focused on what makes the Jewish Community Center, ours and others, Jewish.  Modifications of access for shabbos and yom tovim?  She could tell me the building was closed, gym open.  Interestingly our JCC could not survive solely on its Jewish membership dues.  People come to use the gym and pool primarily.  They also enroll for child care services, from day care to after school care to summer camp.  These have a vestige of Jewishness.  They ask that home made lunches be free of pork and food prepared in their kitchen is kosher.  But they cannot realistically suspend child care on yom tovim.  They have lunch sessions with Jewish themed talks.  They are directed at seniors.  I know the principal instructor.  Unlikely to have any content not already covered in a Hebrew school of the 1960s, long since atrophied by the Hebrew school my kids attended in the 1990s.  Struck me as minimalist, though I don't really know.

And like many secular Jewish agencies, they tend to stratify people.  Children under age 5 neeed to be together, pre-Bar Mitzvah grade school needs to be together, Seniors need to be together. With suitable programming for each, with crossover regarded as intrusion on protected turf.  I assume they learned this from the USCJ Congregations that promote this, or perhaps from childhood weekends at Grossingers and the like where they functioned this way.  Homogeneity created fewer problems than diversity, be the stratification by age, wealth, level of observance, or political views.  As polarized as America has become and as badly as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has been managed, as echo chambers have become the places we default to unless forced elsewhere, the really valuable parts of the world as I see it seem to do the opposite.  In my workplaces, my common mission is shared by all sorts of people.  On a cruise where people are assigned to tables either randomly or semi-randomly and where you could be sharing an excursion adventure with anyone, being with people who are not like me is integral to enjoyment.  My electronic friend, Rabbi Hayim Herring wrote a book Connecting Generations: Bridging the Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial Divide (Rowman and Littlefield 2019).  He argued that organizations do themselves and their users a disservice when they put people into generational boxes.  The workplaces and vacation operators have learned this.  The agencies of Judaism haven't, except for maybe the Orthodox synagogues.  Of all my experiences at the Open House, it is my impression that I belong here and not there caused me the most unease.

Since this was an Open House being attended by a variety of people who might be interested in the JCC for many different reasons, the event also had vendors with display tables lining the walls.  Some were Federation subagencies like the JCC.  Others sold tutoring services, the PJ Library which provides Jewish books to Jewish preschoolers and early readers, various services of interest to Seniors, The Friends School for kids who need a level of prestigious entitlement beyond which the local day school struggles to compete.  

They had bagels and coffee on a table next to a big depleted box with paper lining indicating it had been supplied by WaWa.  I didn't eat anything.

The people were pleasant.  The facilities clean.  And the gym top notch.  I don't think Jewish was at a level that would greatly enhance me from my current level.  I already attend an excellent Osher Institute affiliated with my state's flagship university.  There I do not mind a space restricted to other retirees, as that is Osher's purpose.  It is not the JCCs purpose, or shouldn't be.  My JCC membership had lapsed decades before as it lost a head to head decision against my synagogue for equal levels of support.  I didn't miss the gym.  Getting wet periodically at a state beach or a hotel was sufficient.  By the time I left, the upper tier Jewish programs were already gone.  And experience with child care could have been better,  No strong friendships were made, though none sacrificed either.  Does rejoining restore or enhance?  Not how I reason it right now.  But while there, I spun the wheel for a free gift.  Mine came up a single day pass.  Now wedged in a little slot in my cell phone case, I could return and experience this at a time that is not a targeted recruitment event. I could experience how helpful their trainers are or whether those lectures on Judaism targeted to seniors reminds me more of college or Hebrew School.  But while I appreciated the upgrades to facilities, I returned with some baggage of prior experience.  And in a Jewish world of significant attrition in my post-Hebrew School lifetime, now two generations worth, I wonder how much our leaders really learned as the baton was passed from the adult creators of my youth who effectively cloned their proteges to run the operations with efficiency metrics now.

Unexpected Snooze

My out of bed initiative for 7AM has gone mostly well, though with a few unexpected disclosures of my innate sleep cycles.  Middle of the Night Insomnia continues, though the wake time has lost some of its 3AM predictability.  Last night it came closer to 4:30AM, though without as sense of completing my nightly rest.  Ordinarily I would begin to time 10-30 minute intervals with my smart watch, assigning each session uninterrupted time in a fixed position, whether supine or lateral, fully under down comforter or arms exposes.  Alas, my watch's battery had run out.  So I looked at the red numerals on the clock periodically, typically 10-15 minute intervals, as I made the best of my blanket options.  The last time I remember was 5:59AM.  Up in an hour.  At the next update, the clock read 7:15AM.  I had an unexpected 75 minute return to the oblivion of sleep.  Actual OOB time, 7:22AM, feeling mostly good.  That final lap of sleep, stages completely without ability to reconstruct, added to the night's restorative benefit.  Morning routine slightly delayed, but now with newspaper retrieved, indoor herb plants checked, overnight messages reviewed, and some coffee being sipped, that seems to be a very useful 75 minutes.

Sorting Paper

Paper reminds me of what I ought to be doing but too often distracts me from doing it.  I have a lot of paper.  At my desk it is manageable, a single pile to the left of my laptop, easily sorted.  In the kitchen it is more onerous.  Unsorted papers dominate the table, spill over onto the chairs and floor, come crashing down from a magnetized refrigerator clip whenever I go to use something stored atop the fridge.  It's everywhere.  It impedes anything else I might like to do there.  And unlike My Space, it is not all mine to decide unilaterally what its better location ought to be.  Yet until I tackle this, or at least make it manageable if not really completed, I will have difficulty doing other things that can only be done in the kitchen.  I will just have to allot time to do this, distracted by nothing else, setting aside everything else.

Calling In Sick

My Daily Task List, saturated with the Get Me Ahead, will need to take what I hope is a one day snooze.  My Covid booster got a week overdue.  Now, the Influencers from the synagogue could have sent be back to the parking lot, but for the last two Saturday mornings I was pretty useful to them.  And they have no way of tracking who is up to date with the congregational policy of up to date immunizations as a precondition for attendance.  There is still some Covid floating around, though the deadly form seems to have gone the way of cholera, plague, and influenza meltdowns through history.  Still, catching up on my immunization seemed prudent.  I picked a day and time.  After a rather pleasant Open House at OLLI, I braved the rain and drove to the Super G Pharmacy as a walk-in.  No problem accommodating me.  Within a short time, my left deltoid had been punctured with Moderna's latest.

About five hours later, shortly after supper, I realized that not only had I taken something, but that my innards had been primed to generate cytokines.  My arm got sore.  I got edgy.  I felt a little warm, though not feverish.  And nausea.  And no end of systemic symptoms, from sore muscles to unsteadiness of gait.  I toughed it out until my usual bedtime but could not get comfortable.  Eventually I must have dozed, at least until 2AM, then spent the rest of the night looking at the red numerals on the clock radio, experimenting with postures.  I felt thirsty.  So thirsty that I went downstairs to the kitchen and brought my best insulated water bottle to my bedside, sipping it a few more times during the night.  By my customary wake time, those cytokine symptoms were still dragging me to unsteadiness.  Coffee not only did not help, but my customary k-cup brand did not taste right.  Back to bed.  It would take until late morning for those systemic symptoms to abate.  No treadmill today.  No petty errands.  Effectively a loss-leader of a night and following morning.

While the innards feel better, the deltoid injection site does not.  That will have to wait another day.

And the ultimate irony.  My incentive for getting the injection was to maintain the honor system of eligibility to attend shabbos services at my congregation.  And I'm really looking forward to not being there the next two Saturday mornings.

Spring Getaway

Travel had been scheduled next week.  I had reservations at an attractive consumer level hotel, a franchise of a major chain, with indoor pool and hot tub, at the eastern reaches of Long Island where I could indulge a bit for three nights.  As restful as this seemed, I cancelled.  When I travel to a new place, I like to visit the attractions that make it unique.  Long Island has wineries, which left me mostly unimpressed when I visited a few not that many years back.  Theodore Roosevelt lived his final years there.  The homestead would be burdensome to visit with scheduled hours only minimally intersecting my time there.  Sag Harbor has remnants of its whaling heritage.  Closed for the season.  And Montauk Point with its lighthouse and park is more of a schlep than I really want to pursue in mid-winter.  

Spring Break, the final week in March, offers more opportunities.  My wife's choral obligations will have eased, leaving us an extra day or two of travel.  This means either a longer trip or more time at where we decide to visit.  Think of this as a box of time:  leave Sunday/return Thursday.  Ground rules a little up in the air.  Basically, as sole driver, I do not want to stop overnight en route, so not more than eight hours of driving, or about 400 miles.  There are now maps that draw a radius from my home.  There are maps that will draw a radius.  Allowing 350 miles, as highways have their curves and turns, North gets me to about the Thousand Islands, South to the Southern Outer Banks, East deep sea fishing, and West to Central Ohio.  And just beyond range:  Ottawa/Montreal, the LL Bean flagship location, and Duke University.  And a good deal of stuff within the circle:  all of Pennsylvania, eastern West Virginia, all but Western Virginia, all of NY State, all of southern New England.

And let's not completely dismiss a short air trip with car rental, especially now that I have access to a convenient discount airline.

Some will depend on what I like to do.  I like visiting museums, historical sites, and national parks.  I like hotel aquatics.  I like having supper at brew pubs and visiting wineries or breweries or distilleries.  Amusement parks leave me indifferent.  I prefer going out for breakfast to a hotel buffet.  And I like stopping at a place or two along the route, if only for lunch and a driving break.

My wants seem few.  The travel radius large.  The need for a change of scenery, which by then will be about six months after my European trip, fairly large.

Viewpoint Fatigued

I'm newsed out. I'm shuled out. Opinioned out. Not yet crossed over the line to Jewed out, but I can see that line not very far off. And the Iggles season endured too long.  I kinda know what Trump is about and who supports him.  I can tell who marches with a fist in the air while shouting a slogan for the disappearance of Israel.  And I know who refutes them and how they respond.  And I can tell who wants to manipulate me in some way.  I don't even have to go to Twitter for that.  The notices from my shul where the Influencers think I should comply with what they want me to do come to my email a few times a week.

I got the hang of this by now.  And I'm really not receptive to the next post on Twitter or even the FB politically oriented pitch, despite their being generated by some of the dearest people you can hope to know or the finest friends you can hope to have.                        

To make this more unbearable, somebody who attended lectures at a university that wouldn't let me attend took classes on how to keep me glued to my screen by selecting what to toss my way.  Eventually they are no longer right.  It moves from engagement to the rejection of the very engagement that the expert with the algorithm thinks I might most like to have.

Part of the limitation may be that very little of this is truly interactive.  My forty years as an active physician had me interviewing people multiple times a day, whether patients at the bedside or in the exam room, nurses on the in-patient units, residents sharing the care, or consultants who come to help out.  Art Linkletter knew that Kids Say the Darndest Things.  So do patients. So do people at committee tables. Often their comments or questions are not what I anticipated.  Yet each situation intentionally included me in the dialog.  And it is a dialog.  It is a back and forth of ideas that can take unplanned directions.  It is sometimes having more expertise, sometimes upgrading my ability, since I started with less knowledge or experience than my partner.  And because the directions shift within seconds, at least in my medical world as new information is piled atop what was there before, there is something engaging about it.

Our screens really don't have that.  On Twitter, properly now rated X, where I have had the good fortune to avoid the truly viral toxins, I can comment to people of public prominence and accomplishment, but it is never on their agenda to respond to me, and for the most part they don't.  Had I made the same comment in a public seminar, they would have to respond.  Indeed, my Senators and Congressional representatives have done just that live and in person.  I know not to pose a question whose answer I can anticipate.  

On FB I know most of the people.  I've seen some of them live since enrolling on the service in 2009.  They are very different live.  While I admire the things that interest them as individuals, be it science, their trips, their fondness for restaurants, coping with Covid, their interests in cooking, even their political stances which often differ from mine, the screen is not interactive.  They can figure out from my messages that I time my week to shabbos, like cooking dinner, and analyze a professional report expertly, and am part of the sports fabric of my hometown, they really don't quite know how my mind works, nor do I have a good grasp of any of theirs.

Of the places where I express myself, the most suitable may be Reddit in is various subdivisions.  People sometimes come to pitch their agendas, but they often come seeking guidance, and this is generously offered.  I do not know what question will be posed on r/Judaism tomorrow.  I do know that when I open my Twitter screen, there will be attacks from the Left, from the Right, the retired CEO of AJC who I thoroughly admire professionally will tell me the same facts too many times, the Opinion Editor of The Forward, which I read daily, will have comments not very different from the usual comments, somebody will call Trump a criminal, which I think he is, and somebody will respond how the Trumpists brought America closer to its potential.  I just don't want to be there, and I really don't have to.

Interestingly, my shul has started inviting me to do stuff worth doing, though it is not the Influencers who took that initiative.  They still run Nominating Committees who populate the Board with Vacant since Nobody could offer more insight than me.  So while I am excluded, I presume by intent by Influencers, from the creative elements, I have more of a niche that bypasses the Gatekeepers.

What none of these forums, not synagogue, not Social Media in its various formats, has been able to do is what David Brooks in his most recent book regarded as the essence of personal interaction.  That is the ability to get people who want to tell Their Story to tell it.  That is the essence of medicine which may be why I found my time there so captivating.  To a large extent, it is the essence of Jewish Scripture, yet squashed in the name of Leadership, both in Torah to some extent, and in our Jewish institutions by design.

Our social media, X, FB, Reddit, all attract millions.  But they don't really have millions.  They have one person replicated a million times who makes a comment to a poster who really was not somebody who accomplished anything on X but may have accomplished quite a lot external to X by the position they hold in Journalism, elected office, or some other form of celebrity, where they already have a forum to promote Their Story.  The rest of need a forum to tell ours.  And X, FB, Reddit, and my shul all seem not quite up to this challenge.

I'm screened out.  I'm shuled out.  I need people to tell me the Darndest Things.

Morning Routine

Brief chat with old friend on our morning routines.  Having one frames the rest of the day, maybe keeps people productive in retirement.  His seemed simpler than mine.  He gets up at a time when working people are already at work.  He makes coffee in a large French press, sips it from a double sized mug as he reads his subscriptions to the NY Times and Wall Street Journal.  Then we chatted about what we think of his two journals and a few other pundits whose thoughts we both seek out.

My routine is more involved.  Ideally, which does not always materialize, I make my best effort to arise at 7AM, later than in my working years but before people other than nurses and baristas are already toiling away.  My next destination is dental hygiene.  Then coffee.  Mine comes from a k-cup, usually selected from among three varieties, with the 8 oz option selected on the Keurig Mini-Express.  While brewing, retrieve the daily local paper for my wife to read when she gets up, placing it right outside our front door.  Then some dishes left over from the previous day.  I tend to do cups first.  On some days, I am scheduled to check on the indoor herbs which grow in an Aerogarden and three Chia pots, as well as a new Bonsai starter.  I keep a bottle of water next to them, sometimes having to refill the bottle before I go upstairs to My Space with the newly brewed coffee.

On Sundays I plan my week while sipping coffee.  On the other days, I planned my day the night before, so I review it.  My medicines are filled in their weekly containers every Sunday.  I take out the day's pills, one set of four, another of two large OTC tablets, and swallow them with coffee.  

Next I check my messages:  email, FB, Reddit, X.  Never an overwhelming number.  Then I start, and often finish, and entry in furrydoc.blogspot.com and begin the daily crosswords, where I usually do five.  More often than not, I return to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee, either a different variet of k-cup or bagged ground coffee of good quality in a k-cup adapter, splashed with generic creamer.  Back to My Space.

My rate limiting step seems to be the daily treadmill sessions, two days on, one day off, with a three day recovery at the end of each month.  I target 8:15AM for this, and afford it a priority appointment with myself.  Once completed, I am ready to get dressed and declare the morning routine successful.

There are some specified mornings as well.  Shabbos is a time to look at what I have done and fallen short of doing.  Sunday I plan the ensuing week.  I remove shabbos dinner from the freezer Thursday mornings.  On Sundays I fill out my appointment list on a whiteboard so that my wife can see when I need to be away from home.  So even the routine has its variants, but enough is fixed as to be a framework that keeps me accomplished when morning has passed.

Baking for Synagogue Committee

Made a batch of Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies, 46 of them, for our Kesher Committee to take to the Emmanuel Dining room on our synagogue's behalf. I think our turn, three a year, is on Sunday. Made in the style of Frog/Commissary, of blessed memory, a destination for my wife and me decades ago when we had reason to be in Center City. Many of the pioneering yuppie places that transformed the Philly dining scene in the 1980s to early 1990s are long gone but I still make Fish Market Apple pie and these Commissary cookies from recipes that have been preserved in print. I found that the texture is better when I use half butter/half Crisco instead of all butter. Usually I mix in walnuts, which the cafeteria did as well, but omitted them this time. Not that hard to make. Stand mixer combines everything but the oatmeal and chocolate chips, which are stirred into a rather stiff dough with a wooden spoon. Can only make about a dozen at a time on a tray, twelve minutes followed by five minutes cooling each batch, so it takes a while. Since these are for donation and they fill up two big milchig bowls, I ran out for a foil turkey roaster from the Dollar Store which should hold the entire batch, to be delivered to the head of the project tomorrow. None for me this time.

Since it is a synagogue project, there are some ethical issues. First, can I use Crisco? When it came out in the Depression era, it was advertised as Kosher as a promotion, and since pareve, it became a staple of Jewish baking and frying. However, it was originally made by hydrogenation of liquid oils to create a solid of long shelf life. The hydrogens were in the trans position, which made them among the most atherogenic foods around. The process has been revised to change the trans positions of the hydrogens but keep the shelf life, so less unhealthy.

The other issue is whether one may make what are considered luxury products for a safety net institution. The traditional Jewish view is My Food is Your Food. Sharing is mandatory and I cannot begrudge another person a treat that I take for myself. The people who run the soup kitchens do not always concur with this. They often regard their service as what the people need to sustain themselves. If they are given what they cannot realistically hope to be able to acquire for themselves, they may have been done a disservice. The purpose of places like this is so that the patrons may be able to not need it in the foreseeable future. Interestingly, this is the same view taken by Rambam in his discussion of Tzedakah. But for now, I pitch in my best effort, rugelach last time, top notch cookies this time.

Choosing My Courses

OLLI Catalog print version came in the mail.  Electronic version arrived in my Inbox some time ago, presence acknowledged but e-booklet not opened.  There is an approaching window of time for submitting course preferences.  If submitted in that time frame, all submissions have equal chances of acceptance into those classes that are oversubscribed, so there is an incentive to complete the selection process on time.  Going about it takes some effort, but it pays to be methodical.  It also pays to have rules.  Start days are fixed.  There is a University intercession the final week of March, which I have designated for personal travel.  Fall semester Yom Tovim all fall on the same days of the week except Yom Kippur which occurs one day after the others.  Spring Yontif is usually limited to Pesach, as the semester ends before Shavuot.  This year Pesach yontif has one Monday, two Tuesdays, and one Wednesday.  That means Tuesday would not be suitable for courses that meet only the second half of the semester, and MW courses in the second half may be at a disadvantage.  There is not much I can do for full semester courses, but it would mean missing consecutive Tuesdays during the semester.

I start by making a grid, fifteen squares, one for each day of the work week, then early morning, late morning, and early afternoon starting times.  I do not like going to late afternoon courses, so stopped considering them a few semesters ago.  When I first began OLLI pre-pandemic, all courses were live.  The center was packed with seniors, filling up chairs in the lounge, chatting with strangers whose names you could read on their ID tags.  And courses were interactive, mostly lecture or discussion format, that one would expect from a college course, though some with an DVD or Great Courses format followed by discussion.  The pandemic altered that dramatically.  The center is never crowded, tables have replaced many of the cushioned chairs, as the cafeteria where people would congregate with either a purchased or brought lunch closed and never re-opened.  Classes became available on Zoom.  For a while only on Zoom but then a more eclectic mix.  Some are only offered electronically, some only in person, others give the student a choice.  There is one very big positive in that classes held in person at either the main center or the satellites a hundred miles away can now be accessed by people who live at the other end of the state.  And some of the best teachers have retired to the beach communities far away from my home.  Yet given the option, I prefer a live class.  And now nearly all have a format where people watch a video.  The professor's PowerPoint presentations and classes where individual participants are assigned a week to present have become infrequent.

With some experience, I've accumulated a list of preferred teachers and those I never want to sit through, and a few who I think the University should simply disallow but don't.  And then there is content.  There's a fair amount of woke.  Those people who think everyone who is of European or male background in the gene pool has harmed them and they need to shout that out.  And there are agendas, whether cleaning the environment, keeping undesirables from replacing us, redistributing other people's wealth.  Those soapbox courses don't get a place on my preliminary grid either.  There is more than enough good history, some science, exposure to travel and culture to saturate my preliminary maybe courses to move onto Round 2 of selection.

I then take a separate page for each day, divide into thirds, early AM, late AM, early PM.  Then going through the preliminary grid, live goes on the left, Zoom goes in the center, half semester courses go on the right.  A few musts stand out, usually live from a professor I've attended before.  I only want to make one trip, so I will not accept a day that has an early morning course and an afternoon course with a big gap in the middle of the day.  And the subject begins to matter more.  I like history and travel, but I also like to get a new skill, whether learning Excel or basic watercolor painting techniques.  Eventually I will have about five courses, usually spread over four days, submitted in time, and mostly accepted by the OLLI computer for registration.  The University offers a Drop and Add time after the classes begin their sessions, but I've never taken advantage of this.  They also offer, for a nominal fee, the option of taking a regular university course at the main campus.  As tempting as this is, I really don't want to drive there two or three days a week, pay for parking, and have homework or papers to write.  Though I probably wouldn't mind, likely even enjoy, sitting in a lecture room with kids who could be my grandkids and having them stare at me.

But ultimately I am an adult lifelong learner.  Osher offers in excess of what I need, from which I must select but a few.

Current Initiatives

SMART Goals set for next half year.  In my line of sight on whiteboard to the left of my desk in My Space.

1. Optimize closet space in my living areas
2. Optimize My Space
3. Write 80K word book draft
4. Read 3 Books
5. Visit 3 New Places
6. Publish 3 Articles
7. 3 New Experiences
8. 3 Guests
9. 2 Organizations
10. Spousal evenings
11. IRA withdrawals
12. Health Targets

To do these, I will have to work a little differently than I currently do.  Longer stretches, focused only on what I am doing at the time.  Instead of for the next 20 minutes I am going to work on something, it will need to be for the next 2 hours.  I can probably do quite a lot in two hours.  Or at least get a lot closer to completion.