A New Age Snow Day

 

Yesterday, Wednesday, February 12, was a snow day. 

The weather forecast called for 3 to 6 inches of snow which was to begin at 9 am and end at 3 am.  In this era around these parts where snow rarely measures up to the forecasts, this one was spot on.  In fact, the snow started at 7 am.  I was in bed well before it ceased.  It was a beautiful snow.  All told, we had about 4-5 inches of snow.

Tuesday, the night before, I was weighing whether I should move my Wednesday morning classes online.  Still recovering from a January 8 knee replacement, it seemed silly to be walking around on snow covered walkways, risk slipping, maybe falling, and incurring a setback in my recovery that is going so well.  But I was tentative to pull the trigger.  I was feeling a bit wimpy.  As I would be home by 11:15 at the latest, I was very likely I would be home safe and sound before the storm really got going.

Reason finally prevailed and I sent announcement to both classes that I was moving our classes online.  Ten minutes later, at 9:26 pm, the university sent out an email saying, “Due to the forecasted winter storm and potentially dangerous driving conditions, North Park will conduct remote operations on Wednesday, February 12.”  If I had only argued with myself a bit longer, I would have avoided that wimpy feeling.  Ah, the idiosyncrasies of male logic.

I was up early on Wednesday, brewed some coffee, ate a muffin, prepared for class online and opened up my first class at around 7:45 on MS Teams.  I taught that 8 am Operations Management class and then my Principles of Microeconomics class and was done at 10:20. That part of my brain that was fixated on “snow day” was ready to kick back, as childlike guy over 70 recovering from a knee replacement might do, and enjoy the snow day.  The possibilities included watching TV, reading the paper, perhaps blogging, reading a novel, and, most likely, napping. 

But… I had a few other things, work tasks to complete, before I could veg out and relax.  So, I wrote out the to-do list and got to it, checking them off one by one.  I broke for lunch but still was not done and continued on.  Soon, it was dinner time, and I still wasn’t done with the to-do list.  After dinner, I went back to work and finally finished up at around 9 pm.  I truly, and most frustratingly, experienced The Planning Fallacy.

Well, I finally retired to my ‘easy chair’ and proceeded to enjoy and hour of what was left of the snow day.  I only did two of the things on the aforementioned list of snow day activities:  I watched TV and napped.  Sadly, it was mostly napping.  I woke up and went to bed.  As I drifted off to sleep, again, I felt like I was robbed of an entire snow day.

Indeed, I was.

I wrote about the demise of the snow day back in February 2018.  That was pre-COVID and I had noted, “In recent years, with laptops, wifi, and cell phones, snow days became work at home days but they were welcome nonetheless.”  Since then post-COVID, it has gotten even worse with virtual meeting apps like MS Teams and Zoom.  Now, classes and meetings can proceed as normal albeit online instead of face-to-face.  This is bad news if vegging out is one’s priority on a snow day.   If productivity is paramount, well, the best part about a snow day is that you doing lose any time commuting and can actually get more done.

I did get more done but I am not really a fan of these new age snow days.

Starting Volume XXII

 

This thing, this bloggy thing, began as a monthly e-letter back in February 2004.  This project began 21 years ago and with this post, I am beginning Volume 22. 

From 2004-2008, I sent a monthly letter via email.  All sixty of those were the first thing I posted when I moved everything to this blog.  In 2009, I posted 12 more, still treating it as a monthly, letter.  September of 2009 was the first time I wrote and posted more than one post in a month.  Thereafter, I drifted from one longish monthly letter to shorter and more frequent blog posts.  This post will be my 887^th. 

887 posts.  I am amazed and proud of the way I have stuck to this project.  I am usually not that good at long term projects of this nature.  In that first letter, I even noted, “let’s see if I can do this more than one month in a row!”  I did have my doubts then.

I used to handwrite everything before putting finger to keyboard.  Nowadays, I create an MS Word file, TSoF 20XX for This Side of Fifty and the year and basically do all my blog and article writing in that file.  I average 20-30,000 words a year. 

The past two years, I have tried to write more for The Armenian Weekly.  Their policy is they will only publish articles that haven’t been posted in other media first.  So, the articles I write for that paper are published there first and then in my blog.  I was already in the habit of writing such bloggy bits on Armenian issues but only for my blog, the only change was first offering the better ones to The Weekly first.

The ongoing, lingering, question is what to do with all of this writing.  The interest in answering that question spikes up more when I write these anniversary blogs.  Do I try to monetize it? i.e. Do I make an effort to widen the audience becoming a columnist for some newspaper or magazine?  I mean, I have always like the New Yorker and the Atlantic.  But dang, if that doesn’t just sound like looking for a job?  I suppose I am just too far ‘this side of fifty’ to get excited about doing all the detailed work.  I suppose, I am just waiting around to be discovered.  I could self-publish a “Best of” collection that I could give to family and friends.  This seems more my speed.  Any of these ideas are good, but sadly, my preferred way of accomplishing any of them is to [1] win a substantial lottery jackpot and [2] hiring others to do all of the detailed business kind of work.  Besides an agent and publicist, I would hire a world class proofreader as well.  I guess I am saying that enjoy writing but not the business of writing.

Usually in these anniversary posts, I extoll the non-monetary benefits of this 21-year-old project.  First and foremost, I write much better and faster than I did before this project started.  Is it really good writing?  World class?  I don’t know.  I doubt it.  It is not for me to judge.  And… it really doesn’t matter.  When you are doing something you like, you do it because you like it and are committed to it.  I guess that is where I am at and that ain’t half bad.