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.

Immersed with Others

My personal interactions have seriously atrophied, maybe even dangerously atrophied.  Partly retirement which took me out of circulation, but not exclusively.  Covid isolation made a significant contribution.  While OLLI and much of the rest of the world compensated with Zoom offerings, introducing some outstanding exposure to people of professional prominence not previously available to me, they could not duplicate those personal interactions that occur in the lounge sipping coffee.  As our masks got set aside, other people became better able to venture in public places, though not yet returning to baseline.  

With this paucity of personal contacts, made worse by not only excessive screen time but by the moguls of cyberspace interactions and idea exchange who devalued our need to connect in a meaningful way to sell us things instead, I am very much among the many who recognize isolation, loneliness, and languishing.  While FB brings me to Friends, some real, some an illusion, I signed myself off for the month of July to escape much of its toxicity.  As I return in a more cautious way a month later, the distribution and frequency of who posts what, or at least what their algorithm approves for my passive feed, has not changed in a noticeable way.  I had one real meeting with one real friend in NYC that month after paying long overdue respect for people to whom I was once close at a cemetery just outside the city.  Visited my son and daughter-in-law.  A few real chats competing with screens, along with a shabbos morning at Tree of Life Synagogue's current reality.  Shared remembrance of one of the victims with the congregational president was my only meaningful personal interaction that morning.  And my synagogue, which should be my principle weekly outlet of personal contact, has largely trivialized it with its perfunctory "good shabbos, nice tie" as the surrogate for floating ideas about Judaism or about events of the days that preceded shabbos.  

This past week I selected my OLLI courses using their new flat fee, unlimited course registration format.  I targeted only classes that meet in person without a Zoom alternative, making an exception for one half-term course given from downstate by an instructor who did an ace job last time.  Talking heads gone.  What has not returned post-pandemic, though, seems to be those small in-person discussion based sessions, limited to an enrollment of under twenty.  

Could I even retain the skill now to immerse myself with others, particularly strangers?  That got tested yesterday, demonstrating that not only I could but that it restored a personal feeling of having meaning.  I volunteered to check people into on-site OLLI registration, even though I really didn't know how.  This being the final day, nobody showed up, which left me with two other volunteers.  We talked about OLLI, food, inflation, doctors.  All the things that would have made chat in the OLLI lounge between classes, and hopefully still can as on-site enrollment ticks upwards.

Then I went to Sprouts, not my usual store but the best option for premium produce.  For practical reasons I checked out in the line with a cashier.  It had been my custom when shopping in large places to opt for self-checkout where there is usually no wait and I sense control that I don't have to defer to a cashier.  But this time, having somebody else do this, even if the only interaction was to tell me the total, seemed preferable to being totally on my own.

After a couple of months away from the Blood Donor center due to a setback in eligibility, I self-treated the problem while I await formal medical care for it and wanted to see how successfully I did this. Over the years, few things have given me more satisfaction than my periodic platelet donations.  In addition to benefiting somebody I will never meet, since retirement this has become among my most reliable social interactions, even if limited to 6-8 week intervals.  Each time I am greeted, then interviewed, and if my Hb> 13g/dl I am taken to a reclining chair where ladies, or rarely a gentleman, insert two IVs, takes samples to assure safety and future eligibility, then leaves me alone to watch Netflix with occasional returns to check my progress or reset their collection device when an alert appears.  I've done this frequently enough that some of the veteran RN's know me by name and face.

I passed screening this time.  IV's inserted, Queer Eye video started, but afferent IV failed.  Donation aborted, as they are only permitted to reposition an aberrant IV line, not repuncture the skin.  Still I had a pleasant few minutes in the post-donation canteen with some diet Sierra Mist and two chocolate chip cookies served by that room's volunteer.  I could have gone to Costco's or Cabela's instead but decided to just go home.  Having left my cell phone in the car for the donation, which also serves me as an escape from being reached or being lured to cyberspace, I returned to my car to find a message from the last remaining first cousin with whom I maintain contact.

We mostly share my late father as our common bond.  He lives in Florida now, not far from Dad's resting place which I'd like to visit not too many months in the future.  Modern cars now allow me to talk safely with the cell phone via audio boost from the car, so once in the optimal lane on the highway, I returned his call, really needing only a finger or two to do this.  We spoke about platelets, our doctors, his intraocular injections, retirement activities, general chat that too often eludes me.  We agreed to do our best to get together when I travel there, which gives me a significant incentive to complete my airline and hotel reservations, starting with specific dates.

Our Torah text begins with a lot of It Was Goods.  There aren't too many It Was Not Goods, being alone perhaps the most famous of the few.  While I cannot realistically return myself to a daily pageant of circulating among throngs, I can reduce screen time, be more personally assertive when OLLI resumes next month, target a new place to be with people I've not met before each week, or make an effort to invite myself onto the blood donor schedule as my eligibility allows.  As my home reaches its suitability to entertain guests, I can be more consistent with invitations.  Being back in circulation in a serious way yesterday, after a substantial absence, reinforced the benefits of this, and its personal importance.

Seeking True Fun

One of my pleasures, though technically not True Fun, has been to watch a TED talk from an accomplished person previously unknown to me, search them and read something they've written, which usually takes far more than the 18 Minutes TED allows for the presentation.  I have a variety of ways of selecting which TED Talk I will watch, yes watch, as visual supplements, mannerism, and even chosen attire are part of the presentation.  One from the most recent series involved how to pursue fun, and even how to identify True Fun from its surrogates.  To say the least, I am fun and laughter deprived, though not absent.  When I got invited to a morning at U of Delaware for a reception to acknowledge something I had created, that met her criteria of True Fun:  the intersection of Playfulness/Connection/Flow.  So I know what it is, which gives me a head start of other readers of her book, of which I am about one third through.

There was a time during Covid isolation where I truly languished.  Not so much now, but I'm not flourishing either.  There are definitely times when I am playful, fewer when I am connected, some where I can identify being in Flow, very few all at the same experience.  I don't feel connected to anything important, indeed react to some experience with unjustified hostility.  Since connection seems the most glaring and frequent lapse, it is unclear at this point whether restoring strained connections is better or creating new connections might be preferable, or perhaps focusing on the ones not yet seriously strained, or most likely some combination.

Finish the book this week, credit its reading as one of my twelve semi-annual projects, and make an effort to acquire her composite of True Fun as my summer proceeds.

Inspired, or Not

Two events on the University of Delaware main campus uplifted me far beyond the two $7 parking fees.  I received an invitation to an awards luncheon from their communications division.  For the first time in a while, I mingled, interacted, generated my own ideas, and tapped into the expertise of experts.  Then their Biden Institute, run by the President's sister, sponsored a presentation by Van Jones, most known as CNN personality who accomplished many things by pursuing a perspective different than the one to which I was scripted.  My own FB friends with the protection of distance and delayed response pummeled me for finding merit in groups on their scorn list.  If you only need to find one redeeming feature of an opponent, Van's standard, you will find it easily.  And he did.  When I take that approach, I do to.  So did King David, when he shared his success with Achitophel, who was really something of a dweeb.  He only taught the future king two things, but that was enough for favorable recognition.  And Pirke Avot doesn't even say what those two things were.  Really, in some ways an Omer message, as Rabbi Akiva's students were traditionally decimated for withholding respect.  While on campus, I felt more fully alive.  Not just the two outstanding programs, but also negotiating new experiences, finding my way, exploring some buildings, scenery, and assessing how campuses and generations function differently now. 

So, as I grapple with Languishing, there are some very good alternatives.  They are well within my capacity too.  

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.

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.  

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.