I figured it out a few months back, right after I discovered the Commodores were my favorite band and all the songs I’d loved as a child are Commodores songs. I’d heard them in other people’s cars and I thought white people sang them. I’m examining this belief because it sounds preposterous. Not just racist but preposterous.

After buying a Commodores album on a visit to a warehouse-like record store (with Daisy in Poughkeepsie, of course), I understood that all these songs I’d loved were real. Somehow it brought tendrils of joy wafting into my emotional nose and something settled inside. I could see and name what I liked and what I wanted more of, and sometimes I could see what moves I needed to make in order to find my way.

From there, really, my philosophy of life began to take shape.

Always afraid to pursue what I wanted

I am a person who makes myself lose at pool. I hate to go after what I want in a direct way. It feels like a sin. I manage this wanting/not wanting by pretending to bumble through life. That, of course, looks and feels like bumbling through life. It’s not a great strategy, obviously.

This can all be traced back to my family of origin (yawn), but let’s not wade around anymore in that muck. Let’s just posit that I was profoundly uncomfortable wanting things and profoundly uncomfortable pretending I didn’t want things. When I did stumble into the good thing accidentally on purpose, I was still uncomfortable. I still expected to be punished.

All this laddered up to (BEEP BEEP BEEP WORK JARGON ALERT, but you know, I’m leaning into it) me assiduously not—and still not—preparing well for things, like meetings or vacations or interviews. I used to not prepare to cook dinner, instead just hoping the ingredients would be there and I would understand what to do as I stood in front of the stove.

The last twenty year have changed me. Calvin has changed me, if I’m telling the truth (no offense to my past and current therapists. They helped but Calvin was the real force). I now prepare more for things and I berate the children to prepare for things. Now, it’s a process–I did set off for the Atlantic City volleyball casino 2-night weekend jaunt with seven t-shirts and zero pairs of clean underwear. But overall I find choosing to pursue outcomes deliberately is easier and easier to do.

I’m sure you can totally see the connection to the Commodores. By Jove, it most decidedly has thwacked you across the cheek!

It’s hard to get to. I mean, how long did Nietzsche (or as Daisy would say, Neetch) work on his stuff? Hegel had not even entered the building by this stage. He was still on the train reading the paper in olden-tyme Germany, smoking his cigar. I can take a couple of paragraphs to explain. The philosopher police will not get me.

I have more time to relax and think now

As the mother of two teenagers, I’m not so consumed by parenting, and work, though active and interesting, doesn’t swallow my life as much. My delightful neighbor Maggie is winding down, though I know she has more tricks up her sleeve. So this last year I found myself thinking hard about what would make me happy.

This is what I think makes me happy:

• Good food
• Friends
• Doing good in the world with friends
• Wine and weed
• Chatting with people I don’t know that well on a daily basis
• Smoking weed and drinking wine and chatting and occasional dance parties
• Friendly cats in the house
• Family (I mean, of course, but that’s the ocean I swim in currently. When the kids are truly gone from the house, I’ll put it higher on the list. I’m not even sure it should be on the list!)

So that is the list. I know it. I’m very sure about it and I actively, actually refuse to put it into order. It’s all a stew of what makes me happy.

A digression

Exercise also helps with happiness, as does family, and paying work or just income, but do I want to put that on the list? I want to take Family off the list. Maybe this is the problem with defining your philosophy of life—you get bogged down in bureaucracy. I may take Family off the list because maybe it’s a chapter in the book I am writing in my mind and no where else, tentatively titled:

“The Day Shift: Just try to do things you like to do.”

Back to the Commodores

Back to my list of things I love. I’m making my list and I’m turning over the items on it and examining them. What is missing? Where is writing? Why isn’t it on the list? I don’t know, but that’s the current list.

Then I began listening to the song Night Shift, by the Commodores, a lot. First, full disclosure—I thought Marvin Gaye sang the song, even though the first word of it is: “Marvin?” My only exposure to Marvin Gaye was at the house of my best friend K, whose dad was a evangelical preacher and whose mom sold Mary Kay cosmetics and drove a pink Cadillac. They had MTV and once I was at their house and “Sexual Healing,” by Marvin Gaye came on, and K’s mom hustled right over to the TV and snapped it off. “Garbage!” she said. (Once K’s dad pinched my 12-year-old butt in the kitchen at their house. That was INSANE. Also K’s mom told me to never wash my face with water. That was her beauty tip but I didn’t catch what I should use to watch my face, and honestly, I still don’t know. Baby oil? Seltzer?).

I just did not engage with this song as a young person, even though I liked the song, but last summer I really listened. Lionel Ritchie is talking to Marvin Gaye and saying that he knew him and loved him and admired and respected him, and that we can hear Marvin Gaye playing music on the Night Shift, which must be heaven.

Then Lionel Ritchie addresses Jackie Robinson, who is playing ball in heaven. We get to listen in on their Night Shift.

Let’s talk about the Day Shift

I interpret the song as saying the gifts from Marvin Gaye and Jackie Robinson were heavenly, sublime, and that the greatest joy for both men was playing his music and his sport, so that was the afterlife.

Now here’s where I struggle. I don’t believe in heaven or an afterlife. I think we only have now and then we die and we leave what we leave. This means we need to get busy finding our heaven on earth. That’s why I’m interested in the Day Shift.

My list above my night shift–if I could spend all my time drinking wine, doing some light organizing, smoking weed and laughing with friends, and eating, and talking to the cats, that would be great. And napping. I guess I want to do those things with or adjacent to my family, so I’m leaving that on the list but crossed out because that’s where it belongs, kind of. Maybe it’s the heading, the thing right before you say, including:.

So that is my philosophy: I try to make my Day Shift fit my list of things I like and I think it’s a solid plan.