My Therapist Took a Vacation. My Brain Took a Detour.

Photo by Julian Timmerman on Unsplash

It has been a year since my therapist took a vacation.

I know that last year her absence was unexpectedly expected. See the original blog post here: vacation. Last year I knew that her vacation was coming, but I didn’t see the impact that had until it happened. In the end, our “week off” was OK.

I am glad that my therapist has time off, really.

But that doesn’t mean that last year the week went by without notice. This year, I was much more prepared mentally. After all, I missed 2 weeks when I spent a month out of the country, in Panama. I was super busy, and my therapist and I talked about the trip at length before I left. She even did a week via Zoom.

So, in all fairness, it really is her turn.

Being a year later, I can picture what the week will bring. My session is usually on Wednesday at 9:45 AM. Being mid-week, I usually grab the Costco shopping list before leaving the house. After my session, I fill up my gas tank at Costco and then take the list inside.

Although I opened the Charlottesville Costco location and hired over 190 employees, I do not recognize many today.

What still excites me is seeing that many hourly employees I hired are now managers and are “running the place.” Even the manager that replaced me when I retired is now in line for his own building. Very cool.

So, the circle of life dances again.

A new set of employees and managers are taking Costco into the next decade. From the original CEO to a VP I grew up with, retirement is what happens. But I still enjoy being in a Costco and interacting with the employees that I still know.

And it seems like everyone knows me.

Which means I budget extra time when I go in. If I see someone I know, the time spent quickly goes into extra innings. And now I see that I have spent half a page writing about something to avoid writing about what I want to write about.

Well, at least I am consistent.

I cannot tell you how many times I have done this. Over the years, I have gotten quite good at writing, but the kicker is that it takes me a page or two of writing about other things, anything, before I can settle in and say what I really want to say.

Once I get whatever it is out of my system, then I am ready to really write.

I suppose to anyone who reads this, it all somehow makes sense. I do try to keep a theme going and to write based on the topic or headline I choose. I know there are times when I must scroll up to the headlines to see what I am thinking about that day.

I know that sounds pretty lame.

I should sit down knowing what I want to say. Yet here I am looking at the headline to remind me of what I was thinking. Seeing what I wrote, I am now rethinking my answers to my “self-talk” question. Did I just call myself “lame?”

I just checked; My goal when sitting down was to write about my therapist being on vacation this week.

Somehow, I seem to be all over the place. My thoughts do not support my headline, and my focus on my therapist being on vacation has been usurped by other thoughts. I suppose that being able to think about many things is OK; after all, I am NOT obsessed over her absence. There is an expectation that this was planned and communicated months ago.

Looking up last year’s article, I saw that I have not posted an update in three months.

I have been writing, but all my efforts have been through a website called Medium. Even in that space, I have only written a handful of articles (blog posts). That’s what I must show for the week. A handful of blog posts.

However, I did make a 67% return on TTD overnight.

I bought 4 options at $1.50 just before the 4 p.m. stock market close and sold them for $4.30 when the market opened the next day. It looked like the earnings announcement wasn’t as positive as hoped. After watching DELL jump over 100 points in after-hours trading, I was seeing just the opposite with TTD. In the end, I put $1,100 in my pocket.

And again, I am heading off on a tangent, not focused on my original topic.

I will just end my blog post. Usually, I can get out what I want to say by the time my post is done. Today, I feel like I meandered around. I kicked a few tires but didn’t buy anything. Next time I will be more focused.