Honestly, I don't know why we bother with vacations. You go off someplace, fight like a madman to carve out a few days for yourself to see family, squeeze in a day to sing "16 Tons" with the pipefitters union, and then when you get back, you realize that the treadmill's still running and the handrails have gotten awfully far away.
So it's rework the model for this company and finish killing off the widows and orphans on this other 20-page term paper, help spruce up the revenue model for another company, and prepare talking points for meetings. All the while whittling down the options for the next report. Suddenly it's Friday and the blog's been dark and you didn't even notice because you were worried about the friends' dog coming for another weekend sleep-over, and why that full moon in the middle of Elul leaves you more frustrated than anticipating.
And if you go from writing CF from a living to writing reports, from code to words, suddenly putting in another hour each evening to polish up your fun writing seems, well, less fun.
On the other hand, the 20-page term papers are basically drained of every ounce of personality, as personality is considered incompatible with seriousness of purpose. There's a reason Mr. Potter is Lionel Barrymore. The blog tolerates these references. That's because you're probably not reading this at the same moment that you're deciding whether or not to write a multi-million dollar check to the author. (If I'm wrong, don't tell me; just send the check.) In a way, this makes sense. I like the cheerier attitude out west, but I'd still rather have the bank tellers dressed in dress shirts and slacks. Let the security escort for the pay train wear jeans.
It's also hard to write about stocks all day and then war at night, and it's even harder to find something original to say about either. I know baseball, road trips, and Googie architecture can seem trivial compared to Iran's Armageddijad, but even FDR understood the restorative power of a few hours at the ballpark now and again. Sage could choke on Fala, but the idea's the same there, too.
I was going to write that war even intrudes on business, but perhaps there's a way to make business intrude on war. I'll be hosting the Carnival of the Capitalists this week, despite my own lack of recent business writing, and I'm going to be running a special 9/11-and-business section. So maybe all is not lost.
Shabbat Shalom.