The list of frugal habits I didn’t acquire from my grandmother is embarrassingly large. As we—and I—seem to embrace the idea of a more disposable society today, the idea of collecting bacon grease on the stove for future use, for instance, seems awfully quaint, even if probably eminently sensible.
One element of her frugality was that I imagine my grandmother likely never had to buy a rubber band in her life. Rather than buying them in annoyance the once every few years I need one, I suppose I could live more like grandma and have a drawer full of them in my kitchen.
As I finally start summer break this year, I was reminded of those rubber bands. Among the dozens in the drawer, there were always a few that had just been used too many times and had lost their elasticity. Rather than springing back to their potential energy after use, these aged veterans of the bundling wars hung limply with all the tension and binding power of pieces of thin string.
And while the metaphor is a bit on the nose, I can definitely relate to those rubber bands. I’ve thrown around words like “burnout” and “stress exhaustion” the past year or so, but I am beginning to wonder if it isn’t closer to what happened to those rubber bands: too much use, too much tension, and not enough rest to regain my elasticity.
On day three of my summer trip, it’s easy to see how travel has functioned for me for much of the past ten years. After being stretched thin during the work year, I use vacation time to release the tension and give the rubber band some time to regain its strength so it can be put back to use.
Sure, you can snap a rubber band through intense, abrupt pressure, but like those rubber bands in grandma’s drawer, the more insidious damage is too much tension over too much time. It still has the shape and basic function of a rubber band, but its usefulness is so diminished that it can barely gather the energy to hold itself together.
While I have certainly enjoyed the start of my journey—in Stockholm so far—I have to admit that I am worried about bouncing back and regaining my strength. To mix my metaphor—and burnish my geek credibility—it’s hard not to think about what Bilbo told Gandalf in the opening of the Lord of the Rings:
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
At that point, Bilbo was celebrating his eleventy-first birthday, so the feeling made sense. At less than half that age and a full third of my work life left, if all goes well, my feeling is perhaps less excusable if no less exhausting.
A few weeks in the Balkans ahead may just do the trick, but I’m open to suggestions for managing this feeling for those of you who have experienced something similar. What helped you regain your power when the old strategies seem to fall short? How did you regain the power, not peril, of tension?
Stretched out, I’ve got to figure this out and find a way to build some resiliency or find a mechanism to reduce the tension or I am going to find myself like those rubber bands, locked away in the drawer with the appearance of usefulness until they’re called upon.
Creative Commons licensed photo from Flickr.
