Tuesday, A Schedule Finding Its Feet

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSlept properly last night, the sort of sleep that doesn't need explaining or apologising for, and it made all the difference to how the morning unfolded. Anita had a check-up first thing, so she came along with me, which turned an otherwise routine start into something closer to companionable — the two of us setting off together before the day had properly decided what sort of day it was going to be.

This was the first outing for the revised clinic schedule, morning and afternoon both, today and tomorrow, a slightly heavier arrangement than usual and one that had been theorised about for a while before finally being put to the test. There's always a small nervousness attached to any new system on its debut, the sense that it might buckle somewhere unexpected. It didn't, as it happens. Held together rather well, all things considered — though not without the odd wrinkle, the afternoon round running late enough that one patient ended up waiting longer than either of us would have liked. Nothing dramatic, just the sort of drift that new schedules seem to accumulate before they learn their own edges.

I'd made a point this week of not seeing any pharmaceutical reps, a small deliberate omission rather than an oversight. There's something quietly restorative about a week with one fewer category of interruption, one fewer polished pitch to sit through. The days felt marginally more my own for it.

By the time the afternoon list finally cleared, it was later than usual, the sort of lateness that makes the drive home feel longer than the odometer would suggest. Still, I made it back before sunset, which felt like it ought to count for something after a day that had run past its intended shape. Straight for dinner on arrival, no detours, no pretence of unwinding first — the kind of hunger that doesn't negotiate.

There's a particular satisfaction in a day that's asked more of you than expected and still ends somewhere near where you'd hoped. The revised schedule will no doubt need a few more outings before it settles into something unremarkable, which is really the aim of any new system — to eventually stop announcing itself and simply become the way things are done.

Early night planned again, and this time I intend to actually honour the plan rather than let it drift the way plans sometimes do. Tomorrow brings round two of the same arrangement, and I'd like to meet it having actually rested, rather than merely having intended to.

For now, though, the day is done, the schedule has survived its first outing, and that will do nicely.