Nowhere am I more conscious of this month’s theme — It’s All In The Timing, Meditation HERE — than on Friday afternoons at precisely 2:29 pm.
No matter what I’m doing — often in the middle of a creative client session, more than once during a nap — I’ve set my iPhone alarm to ring.
I have just under a minute to accomplish my mission.
I must open the app for my gym, scroll past categories like “Group Fitness” to select “Aquatics,” slide the calendar bar from Friday to Sunday, and then scroll down to choose my favorite time: Sunday at 2:30pm.
The three-lane pool requires reservations for each 30-minute slot.
Throughout the day, new slots open exactly 48 hours in advance.
if I’m somehow distracted and try at 2:31, more often than not all three lanes are already reserved.
My dreams of my three-part Sunday ritual — Sauna | Swim | Sauna — are dashed.
I can only aspire to the wait list — or try again at 2:59 for the final swim slot of the day, which alas means forfeiting my final sauna since the pool closes at 3:30.
Since it’s one of my favorite rituals of the week, the stakes have become astonishingly high, perhaps even dangerously so.
Before I get into last Sunday’s pool incident — one where I may not present myself in the very best light — I’ve been surprisingly chill about another aspect of timing: the ongoing saga of my new book’s release HERE.
Although my marketing partners are viewing this as an evergreen, for obvious reasons — holiday gift giving and New Year’s resolutions — having it live and available ASAP is a no-brainer.
Last week I shared that we ran into a problem with Amazon’s misclassification.
Because “Journal” was in the title, I received an auto-response that it should be classified as a blank book — something obviously inaccurate considering that it has 315 pages of content.
As predicted, the helpful supervisor wrote back that the problem was resolved and that the review process would continue forward, which it did … until we hit another snag.
I’m not saying all of this directly contributed to the ferocity of my response, but last week when I emerged from a post-Sauna rinse to enter the pool to find all three lanes occupied, I felt my blood pressure rising.
Two of the other swimmers I knew — one a nodding acquaintance, the other the quixotic woman I wrote about before HERE, who walks through the water draped in pool noodles while holding her iPhone — were familiar faces.
Having seen them both often, I trusted their sense of timing.
The third party was a stranger, swimming laps without stopping at either end, which made it almost impossible to get her attention.
Resigned, I startled her by tapping her elbow as she circled around, telling her that I had reserved the lane for this time.
My assumption was that she was an aquatic opportunist, someone who’d planned a visit to the therapy pool or the whirlpool but, seeing an empty lane, plunged in, hoping it would remain unclaimed.
Instead, she defiantly insisted that she also had a reservation for this time, to which I replied, “I’d really like to see that.”
My Weekly Wind-Down Relaxation Ritual was definitely NOT going according to plan.
The second round of Amazon mishegas began with another startlingly inaccurate misperception.
Since my book contains the entire contents of the 1911 public domain classic The Science of Getting Rich, it was misperceived as being merely that, not an original work.
This is, of course, if not the other extreme of the blank book error, simply another facet of confusion.
I’ve created something with original essays, chapter summaries, resources, and 40 days of journaling prompts.
Again, knowing that once someone actually looked at the submitted manuscript we’d resolve this, I felt confident about the ultimate outcome, although anxious about yet another delay.
And, I was also reminded of one of my favorite teaching parables: the Blind Men and the Elephant.
The earliest version of this story dates from way before Amazon: 500 B.C.E., during the lifetime of the Buddha.
It became known to western audiences, however, only in 1872 in John Godfrey Saxe’s poem The Blind Men and the Elephant.
Here are the first four stanzas:
It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined,
who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind),
that each by observation, might satisfy his mind.
The first approached the elephant, and, happening to fall,
against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the elephant, is nothing but a wall!”
The second feeling of the tusk, cried: “Ho! what have we here,
so very round and smooth and sharp? To me tis mighty clear,
this wonder of an elephant, is very like a spear!”
The third approached the animal, and, happening to take,
the squirming trunk within his hands, “I see,” quoth he,
the elephant is very like a snake!”
Stay tuned for more confusion.
With this new problem, it seemed wise to adjust the cover and title pages of the book to more clearly state that it was indeed a journal.
I also thought it wise to adjust the subtitle to “A 40-Day Guided Transformation.”
Even though this amounted to only a five-word change, it was firmly in the realm of my designer Tilman.
He’s done an incredible job — everyone loves the cover — but sometimes his texting me back is not as fast as I want it to be (which is, to be honest, as close to instantaneous as possible).
Particularly given that our holiday / New Year deadlines are rapidly approaching, this might be a source of angst, until fortunately, I remembered something about Tilman’s sense of timing.
Here’s the second part of Saxe’s poem:
The fourth reached out his eager hand, and felt about the knee:
“What most this wondrous beast is like, is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“Tis clear enough the elephant is very like a tree.”
The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said; “E’en the blindest man
can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an elephant, is very like a fan!”
The sixth no sooner had begun, about the beast to grope,
than, seizing on the swinging tail, that fell within his scope,
“I see,” quothe he, “the elephant is very like a rope!”
And so these men of Indostan, disputed loud and long,
each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!
So, oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween,
tread on in utter ignorance, of what each other mean,
and prate about the elephant, not one of them has seen!
Although when I lived in hipster Bushwick we were only a comfortable walking distance apart — our zip codes differing by one digit — Tilman and I now live in different time zones.
Specifically, I’ve noticed that each pass-through of the manuscript I receive arrives somewhere between 4 and 6 am.
The work is excellent — corrections made and design problems solved — all while Vlad and I (and most of the population) are sound asleep.
As at the Apple Store, where I usually want help from the most fresh-faced genius, I sometimes feel the same way about designers.
I’m eager for their young pop-culture eye, which might mean that — like Tilman, who just turned 25 — they’re also living in a nocturnal time zone I’ve no desire to visit anymore.
The gauntlet dropped, the Swimming Opportunist went to grab her phone, as did I.
Before I had a chance to produce the smoking gun of my own 2:30 reservation, her bravado evaporated completely when she realized she had the wrong time.
She apologized sheepishly.
I’d like to think I was gracious in my victory, perhaps because it was a relief that we could at least agree on something as basic as clock time.
Unlike with Amazon and the blind men and the elephant — “each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong” — we’d reached a clear consensus.
To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, sometimes “2:30 is 2:30 is 2:30.”
And sure enough, this morning at 4:34 am, the adjusted cover and title pages arrived from Tilman, ready for resubmission.
My job, it seems, is simply to take the wins where they appear — trusting that Amazon will eventually see the whole elephant rather than whichever part they happen to grab, and that everything — from 2:29 alarms to Tilman’s pre-dawn revisions — really is All In The Timing.
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