On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 5/1/2003
Priorities
No one--on his death bed--ever said, “I should have spent more time at the office!”
We have these rides in our club called the Friendly Fridays. They are a long-running club institution, and a popular one. In fact, most weeks, attendance at the Friday rides equals or surpasses attendance at the marquee weekend rides. Friendly Fridays are theoretically all-inclusive. There are assigned ride leaders for three different tempos/routes, and folks show up in droves for all three rides.
I don’t often do the Friday rides because they don’t really suit my weekly agenda. I frequently have something fairly ambitious planned for Saturday, so getting worn out on Friday doesn’t make a lot of sense. (Yes, the Friday rides can wear me out: the faster group rides hard and spends more than half the day on the bike. And don’t assume the slower groups do shorter routes either. They log impressive miles, but just take their time doing it.) Occasionally though, when my big weekend ride ends up on a Sunday, and when my work schedule permits, I will show up for a Friday ride.
Every time I do, I’m amazed at how many people are out there, ready to ride on what is ostensibly a work day. The last time I did one, I looked around and considered who all these several dozen people were and why they could be out there horsing around on a Friday when the system dictates that they ought to have their noses to the grindstones somewhere. The answers to that question are as various as the people on the rides. Some of them are retired, many at ages well below the traditional 65. A fortunate few have what we call “independent means.” This doesn’t neccesarily mean they’re filthy rich...just that they have managed, through inheritance or investments, to bank enough funds to live off the proceeds. They may live quite frugally, choosing a simple, non-working path to a more remunerative, working career.
Other people on the rides are still part of the working class, in one way or another, but have crafted their work schedules to include at least one day off a week. Some are working four ten-hour days; others are simply giving up a day of work. Less pay = more free time. One woman I know took a new job only on the condition that she have Fridays off. Others just have flexible hours...are their own bosses, in effect.
I fall into this last group. I only write bike columns for fun. My actual career is as a free-lance commercial illustrator. (It’s off the subject, but if you want to know what kind of an illustrator I am, you can find out by clicking here.) In theory, all the hours I borrow from my work week to go riding are billable hours. (Even if I miss the Friday rides, I typically take off parts of Tuesday and Thursday afternoons to go riding, either alone or with friends.) Assuming a minimum of $50 an hour for my time, a four-hour bike ride on a weekday would cost me at the very least $200. At that rate, doing a couple of rides a week would end up enrolling me in one of the most expensive health clubs in the country. Over $2000 a month would be hefty club dues indeed.
Well of course, I don’t think of it that way. I have my life ordered around different priorities, and so, apparently, do a lot of my friends and club mates who do the Friday rides. In my world, time does not equal money. No, I am not of independent means, and yes, I do have to work--sometimes quite dilligently--to earn my living. But I have chosen to work a little less and play a little more...to earn a little less and to savor the time saved from work right now, today, rather than when I’m too old or too dead to appreciate it. I am fortunate that my particular talents allow me to make my own schedule. Sometimes, when I have a pressing deadline or an overload of work, I do have to forgo my weekday rides. Feast-or-famine is the old byword of the free-lancer, so yeah, those days do happen. But I can usually work at night or when it’s raining, so most of the time I can wedge out a few hours of daylight for riding. I happily swap billable hours for bikeable hours.
And that--if you haven’t figured it out by now--is the point of this month’s column: quality-of-life choices. I know it is only incidentally related to cycling, but I think it needs to be said. And maybe, if you take it to heart, it will help you to cycle more, or to make your cycling more fulfilling. Working less and playing more could encompass any number of other time-vs-money choices you might make: spending more time with your children or sweetie; doing art-for-art’s-sake creative stuff; gardening; remodeling; fishing; etc. Speaking of fishing... This subject brings to mind one of my favorite books, the Curtis Creek Manifesto. It is a wonderful, delightfully illustrated guide to fly fishing, and it’s as hilarious and free-spirited as it is practical and instructional. I recommend it wholeheartedly, and I’m not even a fisherman. (I think it is universally agreed that all recreational fishing, and in exquisite particular, fly fishing, is one of the most delightful ways ever devised for wasting time, and while I myself am an abject failure as a fisherman, I honor that aspect of the pastime...passing time, cheerfully and unproductively.) Anyway, on the fly leaf of the Curtis Creek Manifesto, the author/illustrator Sheridan Anderson describes himself, listing his various accomplishments and claims to fame. And the last item on his resumé is, “Eternal foe of the Work Ethic.”
That old Work Ethic...that protestant/catholic/jewish guilt trip. Most of us had it pounded into our mushy, malleable little minds when we were growing up that WorkWorkWork was the only choice. Conventional wisdom has it that our parents or their parents were scarred and traumatised by the Great Depression, and that ever after, one never took any job or toil for granted. Work hard every day of your life, save every penny, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get by. Personally, I think this work ethic predates the Depression by a few thousand years. Think of Aesop’s fable about the hard-working ants and the lazy, fiddling grasshopper. Shame on that carefree grasshopper: he’ll be sorry soon enough, when winter rolls around!
For most of the history of civilization, this has been true. Life has been hard, brutish, and short, and if you didn’t work hard, plan carefully, and save prudently, you could end up in a world of hurt. In many respects and in many parts of the world, this is still true. But now--in spite of the current recession--we live in a world that allows many people a much greater amount of leeway and leisure time, if we choose to order our lives accordingly.
This may seem cavalier or pollyanna-ish to you if you are just scraping by or just got laid off. Believe me, I sympathise. I’ve spent most of my life just scraping by, and my wife just got laid off. I know the feeling. But I still maintain that for most people, a better life is possible with less work and more leisure, given a little ingenuity and creativity, and especially given a reordering of our values and priorities...given an opportunity to rethink what is important to us. Perhaps, if you are one of those many modern worker bees who has recently been laid off or downsized...perhaps this hiccup in your daily routine can act as a catalyst to reinventing your life. Remember that great job-hunting book, What Color is Your Parachute?? It has been a long time since I read it, but I seem to recall the main thrust of the book was that we can create or invent the jobs or careers we want for ourselves: figure out what’s important in our lives, including how much we want to work, and then sell our personal agenda to the employer who will buy into it. Seem preposterous? Read the book.
There was such a premium put on hard work--as in working massive amounts of overtime--during the go-go 80’s and 90’s, that it is sometimes hard to step back from that feeding frenzy and say, “Wait a minute...what’s the point of all this?” Now, with so many of those dot.com dreams in the dumper, we do have the time to reevaluate those priorities...to wonder whether all those hours in cublicles were well spent, and whether they might have been better spent watching our kids grow up or in riding down a backroad on a sunny afternoon. There was a brief flurry in our local newspaper a few months ago regarding such a question at one of the hot new telecom start-ups near here. According to the reports, the CEO circulated a memo to all employees suggesting that if they were not willing to give up their Christmas holiday and work overtime through that period, then perhaps they ought to consider working elsewhere. Some disgruntled staff leaked this memo to the press, and it all blew up in the CEO’s face. Within a few weeks, the Scrooge-worthy CEO was out of a job, and good riddance. Seems the overworked workers finally decided enough was enough.
Most of us have in some way the capacity to decide when enough is enough. Most of us can find a way to free up a little more time for fun, for creativity, for relaxation, for recreaton. Sometimes it's as simple as flex-time. Sometimes we have to give up some income. Maybe we even give up a chance to be on the fast track to promotion. I’m not suggesting that you Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out, as was suggested in the 60’s. This is not about being lazy and unproductive and irresponsible. In spite of my counter-culture heritage, I have worked hard all my life. We’ve put our kids through college--with their help, for sure--and we’ve paid off the mortgage. You don’t do that goofing off all the time. I’m a firm believer in hard work and prudent fiscal management, but I’m also a firm believer in balance and proportion: knowing when to say when, especially when it comes to all work and no play making one a dull boy.
I am suggesting we each ought to consider how much of our time needs to be devoted to the pursuit of the almighty dollar...to the getting and keeping of monetary wealth and all the material stuff that wealth affords us.
Real wealth is the mental and physical health of your family, the companionship of your friends, the beauty and harmony of the wonderful world around you, the dipping, diving downhill dance on a weekday afternoon ride. Real wealth is time. It’s all you are given. Use it wisely.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net