Dear Readers,
The sun is out and everything reflects its brilliance. It’s a day to be outdoors and maybe, like The Muse, you are on your way to the seaside. I hope so.
I didn’t think I’d be writing to you today, but I’m an hour early to pick up a van that isn’t ready and so I’m sitting in a café near the North Circular with time to wait. This is kind of the story of my life. I’m rarely late, and very often too early. There’s something of our dad in this – one of his favourite Sunday morning utterances (after Lord God Almighty Come Down From Heaven And Hit Me With A Hammer and Is The Back Of My Jumper Clean) was I Hates Rushing. And we’d all be sitting in the car waiting for him like, not the other way around. But it’s like he had, and has, probably, and I have, this fear of being late. Always early. Not four-hours-before-the-flight early (hi Neasa) but spending-too-long-working-out-the-best-route-to-wherever-you’re-supposed-to-be-going-and-then-leaving-an-hour-too-early early. And even then, clock-watching obsessively from the minute you wake up until it’s time to go. I’m doing it now. I’m two minutes walk from the place I need to be in a half-an-hour’s time an I keep looking at my watch.
My brother Jason has a better approach. Brazen, nearly. Rocks up to the airport forty-five minutes before take-off and rolls through security and straight to the gate. That kind of craic would guarantee me some chronic anxiety. Way too many what-ifs in that scenario. Traffic! Queues at security! Forgetting something and having to go back! Etc! Last weekend I flew home to Cork and I believed all the hype and got to the airport three hours before the flight. Absolutely no need for it – obviously the airport operators want you in there spending for as long as possible after their lean pandemic years – but I think that I have some kind of built-in stress forecaster that demanded I be there as early as advised because (of course) what-if I had arrived an hour later and then missed the flight for reasons of Traffic! Queues! Etc! Maybe many of us have this, and if you’re an airport operator you can capitalise on it.
I’m not sure where this is going. My feeling is that my devotion to earliness means I’m losing out on not just the time spent waiting when I get to wherever too early, but also the time spent fretting about getting there. It’s zero fun, fretting, and I’d rather be writing. Or chatting. Or walking. Or reading. Or just about anything else.
So maybe I can re-balance things. Find a middle ground between worrying about being late and being present in the time before setting off. Get better at separating the too. Maybe have a cut-off point. Because as you know and I know, worrying doesn’t change things.
For the next eleven minutes I’ll tell myself that I don’t need to set off ten minutes early for that two-minute walk and I’ll save the what-ifs for the journey. It’s worth a try. Of course if it works I’ll try it again, and again. Thanks for reading.
Yours sincerely,
Paul