Down Time

I might have gotten the term “Down Time” from when I was in the Navy. As in “we got some down time while they repair the Portable Starboard Smoke Shifter, grab smokes if you got ’em.” Then we’d shuffle off to smoke, eat trash food ( called geedunk in the Navy), talk about girls and women we liked, and hope maybe the interlude would last until it was time to head to Mess (mealtime). The idea was not to pioneer a new leisure-time concept, be creative, or do anything constructive. After a while, I found this inactivity to be extremely boring. I have trouble doing nothing. But you may have heard about the nail that sticks up getting pounded down. And that was prertty much what happened when I, being the young nineteen year old that I was spoke up on the issue.

Happily, I now control my own actions, but I never did learn the joys of sitting around. Getting too sick to keep busy and having enforced stillness is a great trial. I’ll plan out something to do when I feel better, just to get the feeling of making headway.

I think I inherited this from my father. He was also always doing, or planning on doing. From him I got my orientation towards self education. Nick Carreras had been out of school and on the docks to support the family at sixteen. But he was a life long learner thanks to a family interest in reading, a decent early education, and older friends who encouraged the nascent engineer in him.

When you are around a person like this all the time, some of it rubs off. And for me, part of that is constantly being in motion, even while I am still.