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On moving, handymen, and our capacity for things.

I am a really bad handyman. Actually, can we please drop that term when my wife is around? I'm tired of her giggling when my name and "handyman" get used in the same sentence. But yes, it's true. I suck at it. And two days ago I took my remarkable lack of skills to a brand new low.

You see, we moved from Sea Point to West Beach a couple days ago. I know I don't have to explain the stress and exhaustion that goes into a move. Especially when you find yourself staring at your dining room table dangling in mid-air, legs in the opposite direction they're supposed to be:

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But one way or another, we made it. By 9pm my wife and I were both zombies: tired, irritated, and ready to eat each other's brains. Seems like a good time to start building furniture, right? About 10 minutes into building the desk for the study, I realised that this is going to be difficult for one person to do. But I was in no mood to (1) admit to my wife that I needed help and (2) ask her nicely for help (see previous reference to zombies).

Instead, I did something pretty stupid, even though it felt smart at the time. I decided to get on the floor and hold up a loose piece of table with my head, while also shifting it into the right place, and putting some screws in to fasten it to the main table. You need very, very basic math skills to ascertain that for this operation to work, a person would need at least two heads and three hands. Sadly, I don't have those numbers on my side, so things didn't go well. (Anyone know how to undo a giant chip in a wooden desk?)

Yesterday morning, with the clarity that sunrises usually bring, I decided to write off the whole episode as exhaustion-induced sanity. But it also got me thinking about our capacity for things.

I currently have 23 unread articles in my Instapaper queue. I have 5 Words with Friends games going on my iPhone, with that stupid red 5 in the icon staring me down every time I look at my phone. Many (including myself) have written about how Netflix movies would just sit on the entertainment centre for months on end, quietly judging you.

This isn't a story about the perils of multitasking, and it's not a story about how technology is bad for us. It's a story about recognizing that we have a certain capacity for consuming and disseminating information. As we train ourselves, just like in physical training, that capacity can increase over time. But at some point you hit a limit, and you need to be able to then stop, step back, regroup, and come back later.

For me, this means something like listening to the Bill Evans Trio album "Waltz for Debbie" on vinyl, so that you can hear every single sound, even ice clinking in glasses in the background:

Do you make time to regroup? What works for you?