My work ethic is slightly different during baseball season than it is the other half of the year. Most of what I do could be done at any time of the day or night. In fact, there’s almost no reason for me to be chained to the house and the desk all day every day, except that I have to be available to answer the phone. That’s my job. Only, as you know, I hardly ever do answer, unless it’s someone I know who’s calling.

My attitude about this should be that I’m grateful to have a job with so much more flexibility than most people get. And intellectually, that is my attitude, most of the time. Emotionally, though, it’s a tug-of-war. I went back and forth with myself all day over whether I needed to be working or not. I knew the Giants game started at 4:00 pm, and I like working during the game, so I kind of thought I should maybe get some reading (or napping) done during the day, since I might be working well into the evening.

Eventually, as usual, I compromised with myself. (Which is different from saying that I compromised myself, I think.) In other words, I did what I always do. I decided exactly what I wanted to get done today, then parceled it out piecemeal until it all got done. That allowed a healthy lunch break (in more than one sense of “healthy”), and more time at the end of the day than I even expected, because despite the jigsaw way I put the day together, in the end it ended more or less on time.