Dear J-
Every so often (usually while heaving my bag onto the bike, in ther words) I pause and wonder if all the stuff I’m bringing along is really necessary — that bike map of San Diego isn’t getting a ton of use, for instance, but there was the one time those two bicyclists from Riverside and I figured out how to get downtown from my usual route. And there’s a GPS receiver in there too, Bluetooth-linked to this gadget so that I can see where I’m’ going, if I so choose. But two calculators? A raft full of chargers? It started out as a more convenient place to stash my wallet, but it’s become a millstone, this bag.
I’m also bringing along the dictionary-sized Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual that I’m bringing to the PE exam in October; this in an effort to become familiar with it so that I have a chance to look things up. But I’m only really using it for the hour or so that I have in the afternoons, as mornings are too dark, and even then, I find myself five pages in and asleep on the way back on the van. The bag is a tool to squeeze every opportunity out of my day, but it doesn’t have to cover every contingency, does it?
The psychologists would, I’m sure, have a field day reading meaning into the metaphor of the overstuffed bag into my life; we are busy people, after all, and as any recent parent will tell you, we accessorize accordingly (which came first, the minivan or the junk that goes along with a baby?). I’m not as thoroughly ruthless at rooting out the unnecessary stuff as I should be, perhaps (that’s really no excuse for what I have been doing: trying to find an excuse for yet another camera in my life, this after I swore I’d quit cold turkey last week … and the month before that … and &tc.), but I can point to places where I’ve used each item recently; does that count?
Mike
Dear J- 