I have posted about this on the Twitter several times, but I think some folks have missed it.
If you follow me on Twitter, you might know I injured my knee almost a month ago. I was playing basketball (with kids two thirds my age) and stepped out to pick up the ball handler off a pick and when I planted my left leg, I heard a loud pop. My knee oscillated laterally maybe four times. Then, I think I blacked out for a moment because the next thing I remember is being on the floor screaming and weaving a tapestry of profanity. (Bonus points if you name the movie reference there.)
I knew this was serious. I couldn’t walk. I went to the health center at school the next day (because my insurance sucks and if you go anywhere else first they won’t pay) and they wrote me a prescription for hydrocodone and a referral to Dr. James Bothwell. I saw him two days later, and he poked at me a little bit and confirmed what I already suspected: I tore my ACL. He ordered an MRI to see what else I had done.
I had the MRI that evening. The results revealed the torn ACL and a slight tear to the lateral meniscus.
That brings us up to date. I have been doing rehab exercises to strengthen my left leg in preparation for surgery, which is scheduled for May 22. I scheduled it for then so I’ll only miss two days of work. I’ll miss the day of the surgery and the next day. Then, I have the weekend and then a paid holiday on Monday for Memorial Day. Then, I’ll be working from home. Depending on whether he has to stitch my meniscus, that could be another ten days or three weeks.
I’m looking forward to getting back on my feet. Dr. Bothwell says I can play golf in about three months and can start getting back into basketball in nine months to a year.
Thanks for all your warm thoughts and well wishes.
When someone dear to you is gone, you develop defense mechanisms to guard your emotions and maintain your sanity. In observing my own grief following Pop’s death in 2003, I know certain times when I’m likely to think about him. When I go to my grandma’s house, I force myself to prepare for that environment. When I’m driving around Abilene, I know particular places like the domino hall and his old workplace where I’m likely to be reminded of him. Keeping myself guarded in this way is how I keep from being a basketcase. I maintain that when we lose those who are the most important to us, we never get better - just distracted.
Well, on Saturday night, Ann Margaret and I went to a movie at the mall. I never went to malls with Pop. I don’t know if he ever went to a mall in his whole life. It wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t. As I turned into the parking lot, I saw the large lit spokes of the ferris wheel. There was a carnival in the parking lot adjacent to the mall. I joked with Ann Margaret that we should go see what’s up. We’re both reluctant to go to carnivals between the risks of riding the rides and the risks of being around carnies. As we were leaving the theater, I saw something that caught me off guard.
One of my most vivid and fondest memories of my childhood is of going to the West Texas Fair & Rodeo with my family. One of the highlights of the fair with Pop was when we would ride the Super Slide together. We always rode together, even when I was big enough to ride alone. If you don’t know what the Super Slide is, it’s essentially a giant plastic sine wave gone slightly awry. It’s a couple stories tall. When you’re four or five years old, it’s pretty intense. I remember us carrying our green faux grass rugs up the steps for the ten second ride. Seeing that damned slide across the parking lot was like a suckerpunch. I wasn’t prepared to deal with seeing it. I didn’t know there’d be a goddamned carnival.
I cherish the memory. Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But whenever I get undistracted, it smashes me for a while. I don’t just get the memory that reminds me of stuff. It completely disarms a huge number of my defenses. The last time I remember this happening was when I was sitting in the turning lane at South 14th and Sayles Blvd. in Abilene. I suddenly remembered the very last time I saw Pop before I saw him in a neck brace a cruel eleven days before he died. He smiled and waved on his way past us. That memory fucked me up for about a week. I’m not depressed like I was for so long after he died. I’m just missing him more than I usually allow myself to.
With 36-Hours Of Extra Free Time I Would… - Evolving Times - The Law of Attraction Resource for Personal Growth :
[O]ne of the biggest obstacles in most people’s quest for freedom is their inability to imagine what they would do with all that extra time. Work fills a gaping void in most of our lives, a void into which we would rather not peer!
And the main reason that hole is so difficult to look into is because we have not figured out what we would fill it up with.
This is so true. The question that graces this post’s title isn’t just a headline. It’s a serious question that demands serious deliberation. Just for the sake of argument, what if you only worked four hours per week? What if more and more of us worked less and less? I think that without serious consideration of what we’d do with all that extra time, we’d merely think up new varieties of mischief and madness. I don’t think that’s what Tim is after at all.
When I initially pressed ⌘+2 to blog this, I intended to write a post that actually answered the question. But somehow, I managed to actually have a thought before dashing off a post full of platitudes and clichés about how I would do this or that with all that extra time. It turns out that I don’t really know what I would do with all that time. So, I won’t post my answer to that question until I actually figure it out.
