I had multiple count downs across devices to help ease the passage of time; re: absence of Tim. I survived the holiday break. But living through one difficulty doesn’t mean a near identical one is easy. Another stretch dealing of absence of Tim. I set up a count down timer app on my iPhone. I manually entered count down numbers as events every day on my calendars at home and work. Reasoning: better to just embrace that I will be wanting the data often. Better to forge the truth than recalculate nearly everyday: when will this end, what has passed, and how far is yet to go.
Funny how two consecutive days would have completely opposite anxiety. Checking the count on one day was peaceful and benign. Yet the next day there was lots of anxiety: a need for breathing and squashing.
Perhaps the most helpful tool was abandoning the traditional calendar all together. Instead I had a simple notepad where each line was an event so several days had multiple line items. A perpetual day view. Highlighting similar activities; calculating not just the day of the count but the percentage of how far I’d survived.
For work, I requested the next six weeks of Fridays to be vacation days. My supervisor asked if I was making a permanent schedule change or merely using up carryover leave. I answered “using up.” He had no concerns.
I have an incredible amount of time banked: vacation, sick, and sabbatical. Why no thoughts of something I want to do with all that paid leave? Tim can’t be the plan.
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