Time

You may have noticed a lapse between when I started this blog (see intro) and my first "real" entry (today). I guess that will do for a first topic: Spare time. Less of it.

At first it didn't seem that way. I spent at least a few hours a week looking around online, or typing (I don't know if I was writing or not...) or wandering around looking at things. But maybe age is catching up to me. In the last two or three weeks, I've slept more. My last week on the road I didn't take the laptop out of its case once. And it took three days this time. Scary.

Part of it, of course, is something I should have expected--this is a job. You're supposed to work. You get paid by the mile, so if you're doing something other than driving, it's a bad thing. And on a good day, you're spending at least nine hours behind the wheel--ten or eleven if you can do it. And nine or ten or eleven hours of driving is work.

I'm told it used to be work the way most people think of work. Truck drivers got their "I'm tough" rep honestly, wrestling their trucks and the roads into submission. In the age of power steering, air conditioning, GPS, satcoms, &c, it's not as physical. But you're still driving down the road at sixty-plus, in a huge clumsy vehicle than turns into a forty-ton missile if your attention wanders, surrounded by people who aren't paying nearly as much attention to their jobs as you are. It's wearing.

At the end of the day, I often find myself in an odd state: physically fresh but mentally wiped. Keyed up but sleepy. Restless but wanting to lie down. And I have ten hours to unwind and sleep it all off. Sometimes that leaves time for thought. Sometimes it doesn't.

Tonight I have time for thought. That may be a bad thing. Y'see, I didn't get much driving in today. I spent most of the day tangled in several varieties of red tape, so I didn't wear myself out on the road. So I didn't make much money. I can write because I couldn't work. See how that goes? Sigh.

But I still need to sleep. So I guess I'll finish this up and take a quick walk around before bedding down. It's so much cooler outside. (Comfort and weather is a topic for another day.) G'night.