Delayed Gratification

The hubs and girl child have flown East for a wedding.

The boy child and I, along with canine, have remained firmly in place, drenched by never ending rain.

The past two days have been exceptionally long days at work, with residual emails and paperwork chasing me well into the evening. I can’t imagine being a single parent. I can’t imagine being a single parent with more than one child.

I have a headache, it’s been two days since my dog was last walked, and I am so, so grateful I have a day off from clinic tomorrow. I have a massive file to review, and hopefully can squeeze a bike ride in for sanity’s sake. I’ve gotten about thirty minutes into the file, but after a 12 hour day today, I’m calling it, and trying to find non-medical words to write instead.

The kids and I have been talking about the saying, “Pay now, play later; play now, pay later.”

We’ve been applying this to getting math homework and reading done before watching television, but in life, this delayed gratification seems to be the best way to get results.

This is more or less how I’ve structured all life endeavours. In the past few years, I still do this, but in a shorter term window: i.e. work hard Monday/Tuesday, play Wednesday, work hard Thursday, play Friday, work Saturday, play Sunday. It just makes the work more palatable, and less like work, when you’re always only a day or less away from a day off. In retrospect, it was all about nerding out as a student for twenty-five years, and then becoming a moderately irresponsible adult playing on bicycles.

Did I get it right? I dunno, but it doesn’t feel wrong and I have no regrets, so I think that’s something.

Though I often wonder what life would be like if I’d found bikes earlier in life. If I’d have managed to get the studying done. If I’d be concussed by now. If I would have bothered to aim for the job I have if I would have had the option to play bicycles all the time.

I saw an old medical school friend of mine a few years back at a coffee shop. He was in town visiting mutual friends of ours, and they’d been out riding. He seemed shocked that I’d taken it up.
The last time he saw me attempt an outdoorsy endeavour was on a 3-day camping trip where 20 km into the hike on the second day, I rolled my ankle, and really had no idea what to do with myself after that. I hobbled out the last 10 km that third day with a whole lot of tape he’d wrapped around my ankle. I remember being next to him in a pair of outhouses discussing camp constipation through a thin outhouse wall before heading back to the car. It was awkward and strangely bonding.
He became a cool emergency room doc, and I, a nerdy neurologist. He always knew how to prioritize playing, and no doubt I was the socially inappropriate dork he felt a bit sorry for and had to try to save me from myself. Am I projecting? The more I think about it now, the weirder it is that he and his crew would invite me along to do all these active things. I had little in common with them at the time, but I got pulled along to climbing nights, ridiculous camping trips, ski trips, all sorts of sufferfests. Maybe because I always said yes. Maybe because it was an incentive to force myself to pay now, so I could play later.

Isn’t that what everyone’s doing though? That’s what retirement is supposed to be right? But I’ve always thought the idea of retirement, and the timing of it, is fatally flawed.

So.. how much to play and how much to pay? And WHEN? How do you know when you’ve got it right?