26 Miles

Life at 78RPM

// June 6th, 2008 // Life

If your old enough to know what I refer to in the title you’re old enough to recall life before the Internet, before iPhones and Wii’s, before working from home doing anything that paid money was common, and before the culture of instant gratification forced us to plan carefully, to save, to make tradeoffs, and to sacrifice.

My life these past few years has been a steady progression towards ever-more work. Squeezing in an email on the way to work, a call after the kids go to bed, a Saturday committed, a Sunday committed. That’s part of the reason I’ve been on a year-long blogging sabbatical — no time to write and no capacity in my mind for anything but the bare essentials of family life and projects. I feel I’m nearing the end of my ability, and my desire, to sustain this pace.

I ran across a timely article on CNN that describes a cultural movement I think I could subscribe to. The “Slow Movement” describes a loose confederacy of individuals and organizations campaigning for a slower approach to life than the one our modern society encourages.

The “movement” feels, among other things, that eating food made by local farmers instead of clowns, kings, or a deceased southern gentlemen, at home, with your family is, well, a good thing.

Those hippies can all rot before I’ll give up my Kentucky Fried Taco. But there’s a larger issue for me here. I’ve completely and utterly forgotten how to have fun. Even the fun things I used to do like play golf or go to the shooting range hold no magic for me. I can imagine that someday they might again, but for now even if I had time I wouldn’t bring myself to packing my gear and going.

Fun to me these days is getting to bed before midnight, that first Dr. Pepper in the morning, or just stealing a few minutes with my kids in the evening before they go to bed. Clearing my mind is all but impossible. I have trouble focusing on just one thing or person at a time. My attention is constantly divided by the present moment and what work I have to do next.

It will end. I’m not worried about that. I’ll make it so, one way or another. But in reading the article I felt not quite so alone. I’m one among countless compatriots taken up in the swirl of a life that’s kept me busy with things I’d just as soon set aside.