wandering parnassus

Went to the city again yesterday. Spent the morning sitting in the UCSF food court reading and occasionally surfing the web on the local kiosk (not bad for a 9 year old iMac). Contemplated buying a house lease-to-own, as it might be a good time to do this during a bad housing market and slightly worse financing market. Thought of an invention to amplify your cell phone alarm sound when using it as an alarm clock. Wondered if I could get paid to do what I was doing that morning. As I realized I not only like creative writing, I just like any kind of creating thinking and doing. Can I get paid for creative services and have the time to sit around and think?

Alot of the leadership and management work I'm not doing has been pushing me in this direction. Using my creativity to lead and manage in such a way that provides actual, tangible benefits and change. Maybe not in a huge global way, but in my own small ways. Thus the brain has not been producing alot of poetry or been involved poetically lately. But that's ok, I'm enjoying expanding the use of my creative brain to other areas.

For lunch we headed to Joe's Cable Car Restaurant that was featured on Food Network as one of the best burger places and they were right. We often go to Barney's, but even Barney's doesn't have that certain sweet smell that only fresh ground beef has when it's being cooked. You can order a 4, 6, or 8 oz burger. I got through half of the burger before I realized maybe I should eat a few fries too. Table service was quite excellent along with the milk shakes and onion rings. I don't think I'll be able to go back to the fast food franchise burger joints again.

Afterwards, spent 40 minutes looking for parking around UCSF. While my sister went to work, I wandered the neighborhood. Stopped in an organic grocery and bought some blood oranges that I thought would be nice to photograph and eat. Then travelled down the street and found a place that does mani/pedis, though my sister said there was another place a block over that was much better. Oh well. In any case, I had a relaxing time. Though most of the business there was for the tanning booths. I have never been to a tanning salon, as tanning is a strange concept for me since Filipinos tan practically instantaneously. I watched the regulars go in and just head to their assigned rooms. Must be a necessity in SF since there is a lack of full on continuous sunshine in many parts of the city. Having only recently delved into understanding beauty and make-up, the beauty secrets of caucasian women have perplexed me. So, most blonds aren't really natural blonds, except maybe when they were a kid? And you use an airbrush to spray on a tan?

The owner of the place was there lounging in one of the massage chairs for the manicures with her cute corgi dog. She's done well I think. Certainly created a business with all the various things she uses herself and found a good location for it. A relatively easy business to upkeep. And has time to just hang out and read magazines.

Unfortunately I couldn't stay long enough for my toe nails to completely harden, so I messed up a toe, but that's ok. The french tips on my hands look nice.

I've been enjoying this vacation of doing, well, nothing. Sleep in or wander the city, sit in a cafe or get my nails done. I still have a couple more days of this. And tomorrow the hubby will join me for the wandering. We're going to try to go to Espetus, a Brazilian rodizio restaurant in the city that we heard is fabulous. It's one of my first vacations in a long time where I didn't really think about work, ok I answered one email and that was it. But none of the stress of wandering what is at work and if the work is piling up.

As I've adjusted to the management and leadership training, I've taken on a different kind of pacing. Part of that is realizing that things get done when they get done. There is always something that will come up, but because there is so much stuff coming up, you just have to learn to focus on what's right in front of you, then on what's next. You start to quickly assess if this is a problem for now, tomorrow or yesterday and then adjust to that. Because everything can't happen now and everything can't be done by tomorrow, and even though someone wanted it, they didn't really need it done yesterday. Being able to keep this kind of perspective is critical and while it makes it sound like well then you don't get anything done, in fact you end up getting so much more work done because you're not spending your time or energy worrying about something else that doesn't matter at the moment. In tech support, it's a bit harder to control the pace as everything seems to need to be done now.

It's a pretty good way to live. Life is good!