Trying to keep focused on work when a holiday is imminent is good practice for riding a motorcycle. You can't let your mind drift when you're riding. You need to stay present, stay focused, stay in the moment.
It's not easy. For the past few days, I've seen the road unspool itself in my mind, winding along mountainsides and sidewinding through deserts. Cedars and cacti whir by in peripheral visions.
Imagining forward can be useful, even necessary. Planning the path through a curve in the road, say, or visualizing escape routes in traffic. But you have to remain present all the same. You can't get caught up in projections of what may be to the exclusion of what is.
By the same token, you can't let what's already happened consume you. Being cut off or nearly clipped is aggravating, but if you don't let it go you risk being caught off guard by the next idiot who hasn't heard of shoulder checking.
Or, as T.S. Eliot put it in 'Burnt Norton':
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
(Who said English degrees aren't useful!)
Still.... just 37 hours till I'm on the road.
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