Meme from Wordweaverlynn
Ted
books
tea
pretzels
water (being in it, being on top of it, being next to large bodies of it, or having quantities of the heated variety poured over my head (bonus War for the Oaks misquote somewhere in there).)
time that’s free (or relatively free) of demands
lightning bugs
wine or good beer (Not in themselves but by circumstance. If I am drinking, either I’m with good company, or I’m having food that deserves wine or beer with it or both. There’s nothing much I have to do for the rest of the evening, and no very stringent early morning demands. Or (for the beer) it’s Friday night after a rough week and it’s a toast to the upcoming weekend break.)
Another thing that makes things better is talking to someone who actually likes you*. This morning I worked from home, which is normally a bit of a break but I had to deal with four different things in that time then walk over to a notary nearby in weather hot enough that I was sweating despite a light T-shirt, get a power of attorney signed and then sent to a Dutch district court to be legalized so it’s acceptable in the US, then hurry home, buying a sandwich on the way, change my shirt, drive to work, and plunge back into all of it. (And eat my sandwich!) By then I was feeling very stressed and splodey-headed – nothing terrible going on, just lots and lots and lots of stuff, between a very busy job and all the complications of buying a house when it, Ted and I are in three different countries (on three different continents, even.
Early in the afternoon I had a monthly meeting with a more senior guy in another department – it’s part alignment, part mentoring. Going to his office was good to start with, because he’s in another building so I had to go outside. We had a nice argument over a methodology I’d been involved in proposing – didn’t agree on methods but we do agree on the basic problem we’re trying to solve and we also agree that the rest of the group we’re both in is not addressing the right problem. Then he asked what was going on with my job, and we talked about some good changes coming up, and agreed to make ou meetin biweekly in future. Nothing special or profound happened, but I came back feeling much more settled just from talking to someone who likes me and agrees with me on basic principles, and because it wasn’t either wasted time or two hours worth of work crammed into a half-hour meeting.
*Rarer for me than it probably is for most. The vast majority of my interactions on a daily basis are business ones. Or they’re sort of friendly but they’re sort of impersonal, like knitting night or rowing, or American night out. This weekend I’m going on a cruise on the Rhine River with a bunch of Americans. That kind of thing is fun, but it’s not the same as hanging out with real friends.