As with most weeks, something could happen or nothing could happen.

Of late, I’ve had some nothing weeks. That’s a welcome respite from bad something weeks. But more good something weeks are nice.

Scratch that (the part about nothing weeks, not the part about good something being better than bad something – which is totally and obviously true). I did some good hiking, some good visiting. Of course, I’ve done some good running.

I met some other runners recently. That was fun: sure, I was fast, but some of these guys were even faster, which was kind of cool! I kept up, but we weren’t doing some sort of unhinged workout.

OK, and yeah there was something like 30 minutes of bad something (turned out to be more of a nothing, which was so great), and that took it out of me in a way that I’m still realizing, but I’ll make it through. That’s how people work: given enough time and enough support, I – and many people – can get through many, many things. I’ve gotten through many things, and I’ve anticipated how to hypothetically get through even more, and I think I’m prepared, and even if I’m not people could help me.

My drive to do stuff is a bit diminished. I’m trying to make sense of it all and figure out why to care. I’ve re-remembered why to care: I love helping people, and I love working with the people I work with. Recently, people with whom I work have been slightly absent, and though logistically convenient since I haven’t been in a state to produce as much, it’s kind of (I don’t exactly know the correct characterization, but I think it’s this) mentally inconvenient that I don’t have other people to push me to get stuff done.

This week, I’ve got dinners, I’ve got visits with old friends, I’ve got research, I’ve got a presentation. Well, all of those things are tentatively scheduled to actually happen (the presentation being fairly solidly scheduled, other things more fluid/ad-hoc, though I think some will go through). I characterized a success rate previously as being – roughly – a number that would make Ted Williams jealous. Since some of my dealings are with flakey people and all of my dealings are with people (AFAIK…) and there’s randomness everywhere, Ted-Williams-jealous numbers seem like a reasonable goal for a lot of things.

The biggest thing that gets me is the uncertainty of really big things. I mean (of course – you might be rolling your eyes at my melodrama at this point) issues of life and death. I can’t stand that dice play a role in that. (No pun intended….) I’m braced in a way that dulls the blow but that dulls everything else in the meantime too, and I think it’d be better to not steel myself. Also, while an actual loss is far worse, there’s some roughness involved in the anticipation.

If I did, in fact, come up with a method for anticipating the unpredictable, I should take my show to Wall Street. That makes me think it’s not worthwhile.

A few weeks ago, professional me was telling me to take the time I needed. By the start/middle of last week, professional me was telling me to move on and get back to business. I was all ready to listen, and then I got (much more minorly, I think it’s fair to say) shaken again. Professional me has only today started to account for this re-shake. At the same time, professional me (and just me) has gotten really really tired of waiting. I’m generally patient and appreciate that all sorts of things, from emotions to running improvement to math, take time. It’s been some time, though. Today was the first time I started to realize that maybe it’s worth accounting for the re-shake. Here’s my anticipation of the unpredictable: tomorrow professional me will be more forgiving, and the forgiveness will let me get over stuff, and then I’ll be ready to get stuff done (as I was on Thursday/Friday). That’ll set me on the path to getting back into things.

I’ve also got to take a less-wallowy approach and give things an internal positive spin, as I tend to do, rather than the external positive spin of the past few weeks. In the words of someone else and famously spoken by old blue eyes (Frank Sinatra), “That’s life.”