Smart mouse...
I recently signed on to include Life Balance in a "Back to school" promotion with Handango, and I must admit that I have mixed feelings about it.
Moms, dads, and young'uns -- indeed, School, with a capital "S", is coming round the corner. You know it. I know it. And every Walmart, Sears, and K-mart is out there, hopping up and down, doing backflips, trying to look "cool" and poking you with a stick.
You know that things are going to get busy and hectic. (Yes, Life Balance can definitely help with that part).
However, the real reason to get Life Balance right now is to relax and enjoy the rest of the summer.
E.B. White's, Stuart Little, told us to "Never forget your summertimes, my dears."
Such a smart mouse.
Along with the selection of backpacks, outfits, new shoes, pencils and what not, you also need some time to sit and sip ice tea while picking at the grass next to your barefoot toes, to read a fun book while swaying gently in a hammock, to take a long walk with your peeps talking with each other about nothing in particular, and everything important.
So, by all means, get Life Balance right now and plan a sensible transition to the "back to school" routine. Then get back to the mission critical task of letting your summer mind wander to far off places, to sail away to the spicey islands of half baked ideas. Throw an overripe tomato at your sister's butt (or vice versa) and you might grow up to be Garrison Keillor! Linger at the carnival, and you might live forever like Ray Bradbury.
Now in the sweltering hot days of August is the time to carefully wind the rubber band of the mind's model airplane with plenty of so-called "idle" curiosity and get ready to let her fly.
Not inside the house... :-)
Comments
Such a wise
Such a wise llama!
Unfortunately, not all of us have the entire summer in which to play. But thanks for the pleasing interlude for those of us who depend on Life Balance to keep our work lives functioning.
I'm glad the llamas live in New England so that their summer will eventually be over and they will go back indoors to their computers and complete the next iteration of their wonderful program, with iCal sync on the Mac if it's not to much to beg for, please.
Rick, on a mountain lake in Vermont
P.S. Reading the information on a competitor's website has given me several useful ideas for using Life Balance, even though they do not have the gentle llama karma found here.
Hi there Rick, Good to hear
Hi there Rick,
Good to hear from you. Thanks for reading along here. I also appreciate your support for our ongoing summer project with the iCal sync. It's a tough project. The work we're doing now is to prevent the data flow through hotsync and sync services from going loopy. (The llamas are another matter...they might be loopy!)
The quippy answer to your comment is that computers can now go outside to play too. :-)
There's probably more to say, though.
I was once a frazzled system administrator in a high pressure environment. One of my co-workers there said something to me that stuck, which was words to the effect that it was a shame that I had to wait all day until I got home to relax. AHA! I was choosing between to work OR to relax. I believe that soon after that I started to do daily meditation in an empty conference room at lunchtime and it was a help in teaching me to relax AND work. (Buddhists will notice the joke there... of course, the conference room was empty. Ba-dum-ching. :-) )
With practice, you can start to tap into a more relaxed state of mind in a short amount of time. Maybe just in the few moments that it takes to remember about summer as a kid.
If you can't take your work with you to the lake, take the lake with you to work! There's no reason why you can't bring the memory of that sparkling water to your work tasks in Life Balance. Or at least take a really pretty picture of the lake and make it your desktop picture to remind you of how you feel while you are there. Capture your motivations and keep them at the front of your mind where they belong, rather than stashed away in some musty locker in the back of your mind where they can foster resentments like mildewy gym socks.
My point is that kids need time to learn how to ignite their own interests and how to relax. You can't learn how to relax AND work at the same time if you don't know how to relax in the first place! And summer is a good time for practicing that simple stunt. You have to be able to do a backflip before you start doing combination twisty back flips.
And parents need to take a moment to relax too this busy time of year, when there is so much pressure on families to hurry up and get ready for "back to school." Preparation for school is a lot of things, not just the paper, scissors, and solid white paste that smells oddly minty.
Now watch carefully.... here I go....
I am on the way back to the code... almost there... round the hall... two doors down... three lefts and a right... a little jitterbug dance... put on my thinking cap... relax... and....debug...
I wouldn't want you to think I've slipped my leash. ;-)