Knots In Your Rope

Every time I take a vacation a line from City Slickers comes to mind. Curly (Jack Palance) is talking to Mitch (Billy Crystal) and says you urban types "spend about 50 weeks a year getting knots in your rope, and you figure two weeks up here'll untie 'em for you.” Curly’s point of course is that it won’t. If you live your life as a stressed up buddle of nerves a couple weeks of vacation is not going to help you all that much. This is good advice.

Since Mack was born I’ve bled my work and home life together in an effort to get it all done. It’s just the nature of the beast. Tack the amount of work and the pace M6 moves at on top of my bizarro schedule and you have a recipe for working all the time. This is exactly what I do. I work on weekends, nights, early mornings, while I’m watching Mackenzie. I’m always on the job. To a certain degree that is never going to change. I can’t expect not to get calls and emails while I’m “off” work when I leave the office every day at two. This is the main reason it doesn’t bother me when I have to do an email or phone call for work while I’m on vaca. I don’t imagine I’ll be able to take five consecutive days off without at least making a phone call until 2013. That’s when the ADA work is supposed to be complete.

The question is how do I avoid getting burned out when I’m always running at such a fast pace. How do I avoid getting knots in my rope? I must admit before this vacation I was getting a little run down. The pace is killer. For me I think the answer is get my rest, eat well, exercise a little, and when I’m working work and when I’m off be off. Human beings were not designed to go at it 24/7/365. No one can hold that pace forever. Well maybe Stu can…