Back when people actually commuted to and from work, I decided to punish myself by calculating how much time I had spent in the car, on the train, in the car driving to the train, waiting for the bus from the train…the whole megillah.
It turns out I spent well over two full years on the way to and from the office, more than 20,000 hours between here and there.

That insight didn’t exactly improve my mental state, but it should be heartening to the millions of people working from home these days. Life expectancy has actually declined in this country, thanks to Covid and opioids, but anyone entering the workforce today will have a two-year credit to apply against that loss.  Yay you.

Still, the gift of added hours is not always accompanied by more satisfactory use of those hours. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case as the world intrudes on our joyous moments. If only we could find a way to eliminate the worst of the time sucks that drain our vitality each day.

It’s a big challenge, but the rewards would be huge as well. Our crack research team guarantees that every person reading this (Hi, mom!) can live a much, much longer life of joy if we could avoid…

1. Seven months of listening to waiters tell us their name and how to scan a QR code.
   
2. Six years of writing posts that will change nobody’s opinion. Ever.
   
3. Nine months of waiting for the pizza delivery.
   
4. Four years of waiting for your S/O to be ready after they’ve told you, “I’ll be ready in a minute.”
   
5. Eighteen months of people telling us about the weather outside just after we’ve walked in from…outside.
   
6. Three months of learning that the menu options have changed.
   
7. Three months of assurances that our call is important.
8. Yet another three months of being told that, even though our call is important, we should just hang up and go to the website.
   
9. Two months waiting for the tone, only to learn that, “The mail box is full. Goodbye.”
   
10. Eleven months of downloading apps and signing up for an account, just to order some chicken wings.  
    
11. Three months memorizing whatever new language the woke police have invented.
12. Six months of reading outraged messages about whatever new language the woke police have invented.
    
13. Six more months of listening to boycott demands from easily offended people, plus the people who are easily offended by easily offended people, plus the people who are easily offended by the people who are easily offended by the easily offended people, plus… 
    
    

Add it all up and we could be living the equivalent of 17 more years with less aggravation and more peace of mind, if only... We haven’t quite figured out how to actually accomplish this goal, especially the part about waiting for pizza delivery, but we’re working on it.

Reading and commenting on Dad Writes posts is never a waste of time, so it’s always a good idea to click here to spend a few minutes with us every week.

How to get more out of life, yet another of the dumbest things people say, plus the only thing keeping me from being King of the World. That noise you hear is all the random thoughts bouncing around my brain this week…

1. Especially in emotional situations, never blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. Whatever you’re thinking, it is probably a mistake to say it out loud. If it turns out it was a really bright comment, you can always get back to it later. Once you say it, though, there’s no taking it back.
   
   
2. If you want to cut through the clutter and get a faster response, send an email over the weekend. Better yet, send a text. For some reason, people still think of communications outside of office hours as more urgent than whatever comes in from nine to five. Also, they have more time on their hands when the workday is done.
   
   
3. It’s very hard to seal a leaking pipe, but it’s easy to turn off the water. Our problems are a lot like that. We might not be able to solve them right away, but we can sometimes cut them off at the source.
   
   
4. It’s pretty much impossible for any of us to change who we are, but most of us can change some of the things we do. Very often, shifting what we do is just as good as remaking ourselves from scratch, and much simpler.
   
   
5. Some people think that the key to getting things done is to keep all the plates spinning without letting any of them fall. The real key, though, is to figure out which ones we absolutely need to protect and which ones can drop and break without causing any real trouble.
   
   
6. One of the dumbest things people say is that, “we have to make sure this never happens again.” First, it’s almost always an impossible goal. Second, almost invariably, the solution would require limitless investment and changes in behavior for at least a billion people. Other than that, no problem.
   
   
7. It’s a truly great life skill to enjoy watching other people have fun. Whether it’s our kids or spouses or a bunch of people we don’t know at a baseball game, leeching off other people’s enjoyment can make any day a little bit better. We can’t be happy about everything every minute, so why not borrow a little fun from somebody else?
   
   
8. The only thing that’s keeping me from being the richest, most admired, most powerful person on earth is my bad handwriting. So many nights, I wake up with an incredibly world-changing idea and I actually have the awareness to write it down. Now, if only I could figure out what “Bsre to inesti dclrogig,” means, I will be everyone’s hero.
   
   

Actually, we know that “Bsre to inesti dclrogig,” means click here to subscribe. Even if it doesn’t lead to worldwide fame, it’s still a great idea.  

One of the things I really like about mentoring is the opportunity to redeem myself, at least partially, for some of my dumbest mistakes. I can’t go back and make better choices, of course, but maybe I can help someone else avoid the stupid choices that still make me cringe.

I wonder if we can do the same thing for ourselves as we look back at the last two years of pandemic mistakes, misperceptions and mischaracterizations. Maybe we need to mentor ourselves about all the ways we blew it and how we can avoid those mistakes in the future. For instance…

1. We’re too damned smug to admit it, even to ourselves, but we don’t know what would have happened if we did things differently.  No worries, though. We can always find a friend who will tell us exactly how things would have turned out if we had only done it their way. Just a thought here, but a little humility would be nice for a change.
   
   
2. There is a legitimate conversation to be had about the value of quarantines and shutdowns, along with the costs of pursuing “herd immunity.” We do know that we had more deaths per capita than almost every other country in the world, despite having more and better vaccines, faster, than almost anyone. Some things are obvious, including the reality that higher vaccination rates would have prevented more—but not all—deaths. Other things are not as certain, including the tradeoff between quarantines and economic activity in various states.
   
   
3. We demand perfection from everyone, or at least everyone else. If a vaccine isn’t 100% effective, it’s useless. If a gathering leads to a single infection, it needs to be outlawed. If an official makes a single mistake, they must die. There are a lot more than 50 shades of gray in the world, but we have a really annoying habit of seeing everything in black and white.
   
   
4. Speaking of which, we apparently think the President is God. We think he has the absolute power to stop inflation, fix the supply chain, reverse the trade deficit and repair that dripping faucet in the kitchen…if only he had the courage or the smarts or the right party identification.
   
   
5. Our worlds are smaller than two years ago, and they're going to get even smaller if we don’t reverse the trend. Most of us have spent more time with fewer people over the past two years, both online and IRL, and our echo chambers will keep getting smaller as we reconnect in person with our favored few. All of us need to expand our networks, and expose ourselves to new or contrary ideas. Think of it as building herd immunity against stupidity.
   
   
6. I know a guy who absolutely needs to be outraged. Okay, I don’t know him all that well, so maybe I am reading this wrong, but it seems from everything I see that he looks for things to make him angry. He’s not alone, of course, and I find it puzzling. What’s the benefit from all that anger? What hole is that filling in his life? And why do so many people these days appear to have the same addiction? It’s been really, really prevalent during Covid, but I don’t expect it to subside as the restrictions and cases retreat.
   
   
7. For a nation that lost an extra million people over the past two years, we aren’t seeing a whole lot of mourning going on. Some days, the death notices in my paper take up as much space as the sports section, but I don’t think I have ever seen anyone on social media mourning for these people. Yes, they post statistics about the carnage, but I’m not seeing a ton of real empathy.
   
   
8. Congress has decided to appoint a commission to review our response to the pandemic and learn lessons that we can apply in the next crisis. We hereby predict that we will find all kinds of missteps, that cable news shows will highlight the ones that cast the opposing tribe in the worst light, and we will apply none of these lessons the next time we have a crisis.

 
After two full years of this series, this is the last of the Covid Diary entries. What will we fixate on next? Click here to subscribe and you’ll be amazed at what happens.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
It takes a lot to shock me these days, but my friend threw me for a loop over breakfast the other day and I had to wonder if I’d actually heard him correctly.

“You know,” he said, “we’re living in an age of miracles.”

We had been discussing advancements in medicine, from diagnostics to surgeries and the technologies that allow vaccines to target specific cells or RNA strands. I had to agree with his assessment about the benefits ahead, but that wasn’t what really had me stunned.

Slowly, it began to sink in that this was the first time in months, maybe years, that I’d heard a statement so positive, enthusiastic and appreciative about world developments. As I absorbed that reality, I was overwhelmed by the chasm. Had it really been that long since I’d heard something that optimistic about the world around us? Had it been that long since I, myself, had expressed such a positive view?

Sadly, the shocking answer was, “Yes.”

I started scrolling back through recent conversations, then more distant ones, until I couldn’t remember any specifics, but I drew a blank. Is it possible that we’ve all forgotten how to be optimistic? Have we lost all hope for the future? Are we fighting interminable battles with no conviction that we can ever win the war, or that we’ll even be happy if we win it?

No question, the last several years have been rough. From a shortage of jobs to a shortage of workers, from deflation to inflation, from the promise of freedom to the relentless tyranny of technology, from the social contract to the tribal exclusions, we have been through the wringer. Each of us has lost friends, each of us has absorbed shocks, and each of us has paid a price for the force-fed lessons of our shattered society.

And now, are we shattered as well? Are we so far gone that we cannot muster enthusiasm for the future on any level? Is the abyss gazing back and savoring its victory?

I can’t help but see us turning into a nation of cranky, miserable old men, well past our prime, aging beyond our ambitions, focusing on the disappointments of the here and now to the exclusion of our future potential. I see us traveling a joyless road by choice, through habit, almost unaware that we have the option to take a different path.

Wonder, awe, enthusiasm, optimism…perhaps these are muscles that atrophy without an occasional workout. It’s possible we’ve been exercising a different set of muscles for so long that we need a refresher course on how to see the light.

I know it’s not going to be easy to break free of our nearly nihilistic worldviews, to see the sunlight piercing through the cloud instead of focusing on the cloud itself. We’ve been savoring our despair for so long that we don’t seem to recognize anything else. That’s a habit, though, not a requirement, and habits can be broken.

One positive thing today. One positive thing tomorrow. They’re baby steps, but that’s how all of us begin our journeys.

If you don’t think we live in an age of miracles, think about the miracle of receiving a weekly message from Dad Writes, available to anyone who clicks here to subscribe.