While it’s true that we can no longer put the entire world on hold for twelve days, I’m sure most of you can manage two. – Maggie McNeill
Doctors, so it is said, make the worst patients; they will not heed the advice they give to everyone else. I guess I’m the same way; though I’m always giving others advice that is generally lauded as good, I never seem to heed my own counsel. One timely example is the advice I always give in this blog on Boxing Day, as stated in the epigram above; though I’m always telling y’all not to be in too much of a rush to get back to work, I myself tend to be in motion every waking hour…and that’s sometimes as many as 20 per day when I’m on tour, and 18 per day at home. And yes, holidays too. But I had a lot of time to think when I was alone in the car this summer, and that was even more true on the long train trip from Chicago to Seattle, over 48 hours without internet. And right after that came the visit to Seattle itself, which affected me profoundly for a number of reasons; the end result is that I realized I really don’t have to knock myself out quite so much, and I really can relax just a little bit. Oh, don’t worry, I’m much too tightly-wound to slack off for very long; however, when one is over the top of a hill and rolling down the other side, there’s no harm in stepping on the clutch and just letting gravity and momentum do the work for a little while. Things will continue here as they always have, but right now I’m just enjoying the last bit of three days of coasting.