Kicked Out of the Loop
It can be a difficult thing, balancing perspectives between short and long. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned from photography – the only way to have foreground and background in focus at the same time is to stop down the aperture, and that only works if you lengthen the exposure time; so to extrapolate, the way to have a clear focus with that kind of perspective is by narrowing your view and taking a good, long look.
Recently I had a pretty nasty McArdle episode. It shut me down hard for a couple of days, not really making it out bed for more than the essentials, and struggling through the motions for the next week. It’s getting easier, but will still be another week before I can get back into a considerably reduced exercise regimen (which is the recommendation for McArdle people, and also the cause of the problem at hand – apparently my VO2 max is a lagging indicator of exertion and does not work well for gauging level of muscular effort, leading to a dangerously disconnected feedback loop – the whole mess will have to be completely refigured).
The experience pushed me out of the home/career/self perspective I’d been maintaining, and forced me to face the immediate situation and condition. My entire focus necessarily changed to deal with it, and as a result my point of view kept coming back to questions of value – “is it worth it?” and “what’s the point?”
Not in any kind of depressed fatalistic resignation, but more of an introspective examination overshadowed by the very strong impression that today, I would be much happier on a park bench than in the office; more fulfilled quietly soaking up the grandeur of the world than perpetuating other institutions, objectives, and deadlines. This may not sound like a very profound epiphany, and I can’t think of many people who wouldn’t rather go fishing or just be outdoors than sweat and labor (even intellectually). What was/is striking about it is the intensity and immediacy with which it impressed me.
Of course the bills still need to be paid, and the family is rather fond of food, so even though that impression fits well with my long term objectives of retirement (or my really ambitious medium term objectives of retirement) I still have to connect that to the reality of where I am today, and what I have to work with. This is where the more profound considerations are happening, though I openly admit it may still be the afterglow from the episode (and thus not looking as long or as objectively as I think).
A sick day here or there I can handle, but with the prospect of potentially needing more time and/or an entirely different pace (what? not aggravating things to the point of illness in the first place? What a novel idea!), which is a very real possibility given the nature of the disorder, what level of engagement and personal investment can I realistically commit to? And this, balanced against the needs of the family: how do I tend to them at an appropriate standard of living without killing myself? Or put differently, without committing to a standard of performance I doubt my ability to maintain, or which can be undermined by unpredictable factors?
Nearly everyone faces that same question to some degree, employed by others (even the self employed are really just employed by their clients and the economic climate in which they operate) and trading application of self for remuneration that has a non-zero probability of drying up at any time. It’s possible if not probable that I’m just being skittish because I’m psychologically so close to the idea of that non-zero number right now that it makes it look much bigger, and may be clouding my judgement.
But would it be a bad thing to wish to be independently wealthy? Or that there could exist somewhere in the universe a configuration of work so ideally suited to my talents that I can work half the time and make twice as much (against those rainy days, and accelerating savings toward fiscal independence)?
More than anything else, the experience is forcing me to acknowledge the mortality of my limitations. I’m used to operating under the assumption that while things may be difficult for me, they’re still possible using some magical compensatory practice (increasingly “take more naps, dummy!”) and may just take a little more work. Now I have to admit the very real upper bounds of my own performance, and put those other ideas up on a shelf I can’t reach – rather predictably this is making me anxiously uncomfortable, and nothing is resolved yet.
