SOCIAL BUTTERFLY -- WHO, ME?

I know that I have been away for a while.  I wonder if I should fall into the "Tweet" mode and tell you all the gory details of why I was absent, or just let you go on with your lives.  On with your lives, is what I say.  Some of you have an idea of where I was and what I was doing, and because I have that back-up, I'm not worried about the consequences.  
The other part of my life is that I am getting a lot of translation and proof reading work from the translation company with which I am attached by the silver bracelet of 21st century electronic wizardry.  It's an interesting experience reporting to managers who operate nine hours ahead of your very first thought of the day, every day.  Yikes.  I do say that it is an interesting experience.  It has forced me to make changes in my personal schedule.  It has also become a significant challenge to my circadian system.  
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I had an interesting experience the other day and I was reflecting on it a little bit today.  I went to a party which was hosted by a dear friend of mine.  He was celebrating his mother's birthday.  A significant birthday, I must say.  Over 8 decades of life.  That's even more than what I've done.  It was also an opportunity for him and his lovely fiancee to put a definite accent on their engagement.  Needless to say, this was a well attended event.  The food was excellent and plentiful.  The people in attendance were all friendly, as people are wont to be when they are family, or quasi family.  I was there with the Voice from the Kitchen, of course.  We don't know too many of those who were in attendance, but of course, when you're in someone else's house and there are plenty of relatives around, things tend to be copacetic.  But then it struck me, like it had never struck me before.  
In the process of being "nice" to those I met I felt something inside of me that I had never acknowledged before.  In a setting like this, I have a certain amount of palpable energy centered around my eyes.  I also find myself, so I discovered, zeroing in on the eyes of those with whom I am interacting.  This was a few days ago, and I still find myself analyzing the experience.  I get along fairly well in groups of this nature.  I usually try to meet as many new people as possible.  I find that it is safer that way.  The reason is simple.  I am not a very good beater-around-the-bush.  So as I go around meeting more and more people I can just stick to the non-threatening facts and avoid the necessity to be carefully diplomatic.  It is inevitable that now and then the conversation gets a little more serious and that is when I find myself talking to the eyes of the interlocutor.  I find that they let me know the depth of trust that I should invest in the conversation.  This happened to me the other night.  It is very interesting to look back on experiences like this and delve into the "file" to see if I can discover the "take away."  
This latest experience has been good for me.  The centering of my eyes on his and in some mirror kind of exercise, on mine as well.  During the ten minutes or so of the exchange, I found myself making an effort to be cautious of the words to use.   I was guarding the gate lest I use a word that would have carried more truth than I wanted to convey.  This is not altogether new for me, but it is the first time that I really delve into the behavior and try to learn something from it.  I must admit, I am still looking for the complete answer.  A little earlier today I decided that it must just be the New Englander in me.  We don't trust anyone for the first 50 or 60 years, and even then, only with the "small stuff."

I still can't figure out the "eye"part, but it is true, and it does work.  Maybe that's where my conscience is.

HEY, YOU WANT ME TO SHARPEN YOUR PENCIL?

"Do you ever find yourself thinking at what time you're going to know for sure that you'll not accomplish anything more today?" (Unknown, sent to me in email about two weeks ago.)  Then today I ran into this quote from the great French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre:
Trois heures, c'est toujours trop tard ou trop tôt pour tout ce qu'on veut faire. Un drôle de moment dans l'après-midi.  [Three o'clock, it's always too late or two soon for everything that we want to do.  It's a funny time in the afternoon.]
It's a very interesting phenomenon, this moment in any given day when we "hit the wall," as the saying goes.  At different times and under different circumstances it can be unexpected.  In some cases though, it can be very predictable, and in some cases avoided.  I remember that Summer when I was working my way through seminary.  The employer had a big backlog that summer and told me that I was to work the "graveyard" shift (11:00 PM to 7:00 AM) from the last week of June through the 21st of August. I was elated to hear the news and thought that it would be perfect because I was playing baseball in an evening league. (6:00 PM start time; 7 innings)  It was great and I took to it like a fish to water.  BUT, I did discover that I had a problem.  No matter what I seemed to do, I would fall into a quasi stupor at around 2:00 AM every day.  The feeling would last until about 4:00 AM when I would be wide awake again and really giving it hell, as we used to say.  I was embarrassed by my "weakness" and I told my colleague what was happening.  All he said was, "Keep your trap shut.  I know that you are producing more than anybody we've had on nights.  That's all you have to know."  So I kept my trap shut and that was the summer that I made $1,000.00 for about 8 weeks of work...Yep, lots of O.T.! It was 1955 or so.
That, I came to know is a phenomenon that comes from the nature of the circadian cycle.  That is, the accommodation that our being makes with the rotation of the earth.  But what about the other thing that I mentioned at the top?  That psychological certainty that from this point on, I'm on vacation.  It happens to all of us, from the CEO to the janitor.  It seems that it attacked Jean-Paul Sartre at three PM., every day.  Not me.  For me it varies.  Sometimes, I have to admit, it grabs me at 7:00 AM and never goes away, all day.  Those are rough days.  Worse now than ever because I work alone and at home and I have a quota and a deadline.  Soooo...  I have to tell you that many times I get hot and invigorated at 4:00 PM.  So I get down to it and "kick ass" until 12 or 1 o'clock in the morning.  What a life!  Sometimes when that happens, I get four hours of sleep and bounce back up and take up where I left off and really get a whole cargo ship of work done in three "days".  
So, no matter how smart ol' Jean-Paul was, and no matter that he wrote a ton of books and deep ones too, he still confessed to being human...just as human as the rest of us.  
I was going to tell you about something else today, but decided that it was too deep and too dark for my mood.  It was about something that I got from Sartre, and something that I believe in very deeply, but this did not seem to be the moment.  Maybe some other time.  
BTW, the Guy upstairs is taking his time turning up the heat in Southern California this year.  It got to be all of 65 here today.  There are icicles on the palm fronds, for crying out loud!