Sunday morning. 5:51AM.
With Coronavirus, I’ve been having trouble sleeping past 6AM. I take naps in the day to catch up--and to stay up to midnight when I am “on duty” in my work from home (WFH).
In a typical work-week (Remember when things were typical?), I work from Sunday to Thursday, roughly from 12PM to midnight. My weekly routine (Remember when things were routine?) is to put up an Out-of-Office message at midnight Thursday night/Friday morning, alerting people that I am OOO and not checking emails until Sunday. I then go into my iPhone, go to Settings and Mail Accounts, and literally turn off my work email account so work emails do not appear on my home page or when I open my email on my iPhone.
When I wake up Sunday morning, I fire up my laptop and check my work email from the last few days to check in and see what I’ve missed--and what I need to know before starting work again later in the day on Sunday.
My OOO message directs people who need help to my colleagues who remain on duty--and I tell people to call or text me if they really need something from me. (For the past few weeks, I’ve changed the language in the OOO message to indicate that while I am not “out of the office” (Remember when you were “out of the office?”), I am unplugging. If people really need me, I still tell them to call or text, adding “I’m not going anywhere.”
This Sunday morning, I am sticking to my typical routine--and I’ll be checking my work emails in a little while and then turning my work emails back “on” on my iPhone.
When I’m “on,” I’m obsessed with making sure that I’ve read or sorted through all my emails.
I simply can’t stand any red-numbered alerts staring at me from my iPhone. In part, I’ve set up “Rules” on Outlook which sends incoming emails to folders which makes it easier to sort through my emails--and keep those red numbers off my home screen.
At a previous job where I worked 15 years ago, everything was done via email. In my farewell email when I left that job, I offered advice on sorting through email, “Sort by author, delete accordingly.
More than two weeks now into writing this (almost) daily quiz, I’ve noticed that the responses to the Google form version of the quiz have been going down. I’ve sent the quiz out in an email blast to friends and I can’t help but think that some of you may be “deleting accordingly.”
I want you to know that I’m fine with that (though if you’ve deleted this, you’ll never read this).
In a previous quiz, I wrote how I was “too much” for Sara in the morning. Via text, my daughter Annie observed that “Too Much” could be the title of my memoir.
Point taken. In part, this coronavirus quiz (and my brain surgery quiz before it) are my own acts of defiance. When I had brain surgery, I also wrote an (almost)daily quiz. I’ve had brain surgery, my head is a stitched-up mess, but I wrote about reading Harry Potter in a dark room, warding off sunlight and trying to get my brain back in shape. The world’s gone mad, but I have not. The world seems like it’s about to end, but I am just getting started. I’m writing a quiz! Look at me--and everything that’s happened to me.
In the prologue to “Steve’s Accidental Brain Surgery Quiz,” I wrote:
In case you haven’t noticed already, this quiz is long and as you will soon find out, it’s mostly about me (with mentions of my wife, Sara, and others who helped and supported me). I’ve been criticized about being too me-focused before, in part because I have long maintained that I always believe my view of the world is right, the result of my personal observation and thorough analysis. It’s not that I do not acknowledge that others might be right or that I might be proven wrong. It’s more that I cannot imagine living my life any other way than thinking I am right—and acting accordingly. For example, I have often remarked on the sign outside a small church on the way to one of my favorite local diners. It’s called the “True Jesus Church.” If you’re going to worship Jesus, shouldn’t you do it at your own “True Jesus Church?” So, in pointing out the incredible things that happened to me and connecting them together here, I hope you will come to see that incredible things happen to each of us every day. Maybe you haven’t had brain surgery. Maybe you haven’t been rear-ended by a distracted driver on the way to your father’s memorial service. Still, if you can keep yourself from getting lost in the constant demands and pressures of everyday life, I hope you can focus on the incredible things that happen around you every day. Put them together in a way that makes sense to you. Everyone has a story—and this quiz is mine.
Believe it or not, I am working on trying to stay in my lane. Still, I know that I can be obsessive--and yes, too much. I order the same thing in any diner for breakfast: eggs over hard, very hard (not runny at all), bacon, rye toast, coffee and a large orange juice. If Sara and I go to a restaurant and I like it--and the meal that I’ve eaten--I like to go back to that restaurant and order that same meal. I’ve done that for 15 years at one restaurant--and even though they’ve moved to a new location, the meal still tastes the same: walnut-crusted chicken breast served in a sauce of sliced pears, dried cranberries and blue cheese.
My recommendations can also be obsessive. Watch the movie, “City Island.” Watch the TV show, “Brockmire.” (The show, while incredibly office-inappropriate, is great with its understanding of obsessions and addictions. This season is remarkably prescient about the breakdown of civilization. Limon.) Read the novel, “The Nix.”
During coronavirus, I’ve been recommending that people listen to the Reply All podcast episode from called “The Case of the Missing Hit.” (H/t to my friend Zoe who knows a thing or two about obsessions.) The podcast is about one man’s quest to find the origin of a song that’s in his head from the late ‘90s after he can find no trace of that song on Google or the worldwide-web. It’s the work of Reply All’s co-host PJ Vogt. In Vogt’s intro to the story of the man who could not rest as he tried to hunt down the missing song, Vogt tells listeners that his therapist recently called him obsessive. Vogt’s first thought was that the therapist meant OCD which implied cleanliness and order--which Vogt tells him he’s not. The therapist explains a phenomenon called “Pure O,” a personality trait where, once something gets in your head, you just can't put it down. You can’t stop,
So, in honor of Vogt, me and the rest of us, this day’s quiz is devoted to obsessions.
One of the diversions of stay-at-home coronavirus is looking at the backgrounds behind the people you see on Zoom and TV. What does a TV correspondent or pundit have in their home office? MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt has her home “studio” set up in front of a bookcase--and the books are arranged by color. Someone called this out on Twitter and the thread that followed is very amusing with people commenting on their own obsessions.
In the comments section below, I welcome your thoughts on your own obsessions. In today’s “What did not happen?” I’ll focus on a few more of my own.
What did NOT happen?
Which one is NOT an obsession of mine?
A. I’ve used a Christmas grid for the gift exchange in our family. The gift-receivers are listed across the top row and the gift-numbers are listed down the side with the gift-givers listed in each square of the grid. Gifts from parents/Santa are spread out among gifts from siblings and off-spring. The gift-opening also proceeds in order of the grid, youngest to oldest. In this way, similar gifts are opened at the same time and the morning builds to the biggest gifts with accessories like batteries coming after the gifts for which those batteries might be needed;
B. Everyone in our family has assigned wrapping paper for Christmas gifts. The assignments are based on the gift-receiver so when you wake up on Christmas morning, all you have to do is look for “your paper;”
C. When I go to the grocery store (remember that?), I load my groceries onto the checkout belt in order. Big bulky stuff first, followed by refrigerated items, then frozen, produce, paper and finally cleaning products. I also like to bag my own groceries and get frustrated if the clerk or help bag my groceries get out of order. In this way, the big stuff doesn’t crush the small stuff, the refrigerated stuff can be the first things taken out of the bags when you get home and the cleaning products are separate from the food by the paper goods so your food doesn’t smell soapy;
D. I am obsessed with photos and have more than 80,000 images on Shutterfly, They’re backed up on slides, negatives, CDs, and a hard-drive in a monthly catalogue system of albums or folders for each month and year (2020-03, 2020-02, 2020-01, etc.) so that I can readily access almost any image I’ve taken or inherited from my father and grandfather’s slides which date back to 1940;
E. I’m obsessed with my Doxie scanner that I first used for photos. Since brain surgery, I’ve used it to eliminate paper in the house. All bills and paperwork gets scanned and then tossed, the electrictronic images of each paper kept, again, in monthly catalogues on my hard-drive (which is backed up by Carbonite, a cloud-based back-up system).
The Christmas Grid with assigned gift-giving for everyone in the family.
Assigned wrapping paper for gifts given to each member of the family (Makes it a lot easier to organize the presents on Christmas morning.). And, yes, Betsy had Justin Bieber wrapping paper for a number of years.
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If you’re a subscriber, the answer will be sent to you as a separate email when the question is published.
Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #14. Autocorrect.
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #12. “Stayin’ Alive.”
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
Want to let me know how I’m doing with this quiz?
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Comments, corrections and confessions welcome.
Thank you and good night.
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