Personal essays
My second word for 2024
Too much
One of the things that makes me sad about the prospect of downsizing and moving to a smaller place, is I won’t have enough walls for my artwork.
I don’t have enough walls already. Several rooms have pieces that are framed and leaning against the wall. We’d planned to rotate what we’d displayed but I like most of what’s up there.
A student of mine had me over to their parents house for some gathering years ago. Every inch of the wall was covered in art and every piece displayed cost more than my entire collection.
It made me uncomfortable.
I know nothing about design, but there has to be room to breathe. There’s probably a whole science of how much space needs to be around paintings depending on their size and settings.
So maybe I could hang a lot more of my art if I got rid of all that space - but I just can’t.
And so I have too many pictures for my walls.
I’m full
It’s not just pictures. I have five sets of dishes.
I have my every day dishes and I have the pattern that Kim and I have from our wedding. We used to use it to entertain - but it’s been years since I had someone over.
I should probably get rid of my every day dishes and just use the nicer set.
Then there are the sets we got from family members as they downsized or died.
I could eat on a different plate or dish for seven months and not use all that I have.
It’s too much.
Someone offers you something and you don’t have a good reason to say “no” and you don’t want to hurt their feelings so you say “yes”.
What the heck am I going to do with a new
Where am I going to put it?
For a while I had a rule that for everything that came into my house at least two things had to leave.
I’ve only got so much space.
Scheduling
It also turns out that I’ve only got so much time.
That’s harder to see. It’s like the snack ad that tells you to eat all you want, they’ll make more.
There’s always more time coming.
One of my favorite Ron White jokes is about him spending the night out drinking and getting back to his hotel at 7:30 in the morning. He stops at the desk to leave a wakeup call for seven o’clock since he’s a comedian and works nights.
The person at the front desk let’s him know that it’s already after seven. He tells her, “no, the next one. You’ve got another one coming around. Put me on that one.”
There’s always a next one.
And yet we can’t go back and unwaste the time we spent earlier in the day. If I could go back and not watch some of the football I watched this past weekend, think of all I could have accomplished.
And yet, I needed to spend some of that time doing nothing. The time I was watching football was the space around my paintings.
Maybe you’re different, but I can’t pack my days too full.
Hang on a second there junior - it turns out that’s not true.
I do pack my days too full. It’s why my to do list has so many things on it that roll over from day to day.
I have items so stale that there’s no sense in doing them any more. I may as well cross those off.
And I have items that have rolled over so many times that I should just face the fact that I’m never going to do them. They just aren’t urgent or important enough that I ever dedicate the time for them.
Selling ads
I’ve mentioned a scheduling app I’d like to write. My first word for this year was “reconcile”. It involved looking back at your day and seeing which appointments and to-dos actually got done and what was occupied the rest of your time.
My second word is “avails”. When I worked in radio, the salespeople sold ads to run. There are ads that run at certain exact times. Say someone wants to sponsor the 755 newscast. Then their sponsorship runs during that newscast.
Other ads have to run at certain times of the day. Maybe they bought during morning drive time so the ad has to run between 7 and 9 am. Maybe they bought it for midday when people used to listen at the office. Maybe they bought for evening when people are at home. These times are called daypart.
Some ads need to be separated. Sometimes on television I see ads for one car run right after an ad for another car. In the old days we would separate your ad from an ad for your competitor.
There are only so many ad slots available in a day - we call those avails. But we could have plenty of openings for next Tuesday just none in the middle of the day - so we have no avails in midday so we can’t sell an ad then. We can suggest a different day or a different time.
And, of course, there are exceptions. If a big and loyal client who spends a lot of money needs some time, we might see if we can move one of the other ads. If a customer is offering a lot of money for this particular buy, we might see what we can do.
It’s like someone has given us a really nice painting and we look to see if we can either move something that’s up on the wall already to another wall or maybe take it down.
Scheduling time
So what if we schedule our days by paying attention to our avails?
Say next Tuesday I have to write this newsletter and I have a one hour phone meeting. I could decide that that leaves me with two hours of avails in the afternoon.
Maybe I can handle more.
In fact when I reconcile the day I can see how much I tried to pack in and how much I actually accomplished.
There will be many days where I accomplish more than I have scheduled but I need to leave space around my scheduled tasks and that means understanding and using my avails honestly.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 200. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe