Richard Freeborn

Fiction and Non-Fiction

Month: March 2022

It’s not Important

March 31, 2022 /

When you’re writing, one of the sure ways to stifle your creative voice and bring an in-progress story to a shuddering halt is to make it important.
When I say important, I mean your mind attaches something to the story that’s not rational. This is the story that’s going to pay off the mortgage, or this is the story that will have Hollywood (or Netflix, or whoever) beating a path to my door.
It might happen but the chances are it won’t. Not for that story anyway. I have several of them in various states of completion, and they’ll probably stay that way.
The thing is, it’s not just in writing that we irrationally assign importance to something.
Up until a few years ago I traded options and futures on a regular basis. I let it slide away because these aren’t buy-and-hold trades. They need to be monitored. With everything I was trying to do in my life at that time, there just wasn’t the bandwidth to do it all, so the trading took a back seat.
I went from knowing where the indexes where at any point in a day, to being surprised at a move of over a thousand points in the DOW because I hadn’t looked for a week or more.
This past week I received notice about an inactive account fee on one of my trading accounts. I logged in, and sure enough it was over a year since I’d logged in, let alone traded.
Well, I thought, while I’m here, there looks to be a nice support level on the DOW, and some profit to be generated. An hour later I’d made a couple of trades, and as I sent the order for the next one. I realized I could push the profit to a nice round number if this one did what I wanted.
Typically, the numbers began moving against me. I found myself hunched forward over the desk, willing the lines in the display to move in the other direction because this was an important trade. I really needed that round number result.
Why?
Truth is, I probably shouldn’t have been trading anyway. There was no plan, and no real risk assessment. Each one of those trades could have plunged quickly into a loss, but the real lesson for me.

The trades weren’t important.
Just like that story I agonize over isn’t important.
I haven’t traded since, but I did look at one of those “important” stories. Now time has passed, it’s just another partial manuscript. And it’s not important, but I do have ideas on how to make it a finished manuscript.

Time Changes

March 20, 2022 /

Last weekend (March 13/14), the clocks moved forward here in the US. In past years this has been one of those almost non-events. The clocks change and we get on with our lives.

For some reason, this year has been different. I did wonder if it might be linked to my trip to England, arriving back the week before the time change, but decided it wasn’t the reason. England to the United States is the easy trip. It’s effectively a long long day which sends me to bed completely exhausted, and after a good night’s sleep, my body clock is back to normal.

This past week though has been a struggle. Every morning it’s like climbing out of a fog. While effectively I’ve been waking an hour earlier than I’m used to, this hasn’t translated to any being ready for bed any earlier in the evening.

I’m sure there’s a scientific study somewhere that explains what happens. This morning I woke up and from the light and how I felt, I knew the time without having to look at the clock.

That’s back to normal for me.

Now to get everything else in my life aligned. But that’s a story for another time!

A Week of Travel

March 8, 2022 /

I spent last week visiting family and friends in England. It’s two and a half years since I last went, with several trips canceled or rescheduled because of COVID. apart from the requirements for more documentation, and a negative PCR test before returning to the US (I’ll talk about the International Terminal in Atlanta later), the biggest thing I noticed was the closed stores and lack of people.


I can count on the toes of one hand how often in the last twenty years, I’ve flown and had empty seats around me on the plane. On both flights with Virgin Atlantic, I doubt the aircraft was more than two-thirds full, and in both cases, I had my section of the row to myself. Inevitably there’s a downside to this, and I think Virgin needs to look at going back to serving wine in bottles, not from cans, but my sister says I’m a snob, and in this case, I plead guilty.


And then there’s the International Terminal at Atlanta Airport!


The domestic terminal at Atlanta has long had a justifiable reputation for crowds, chaos, and confusion. That might be why the planners built the International Terminal on the far eastern side of the airport.
The terminal is well signposted from the three main highways in Atlanta – I-75, I-85, and 285. However, the moment you leave the highways, the signs disappear. I was “fortunate” to have used the International Terminal on my last trip to England, so there were some memory tags that helped get me there.


Getting out is another issue. The moment you pass the sign thanking you for visiting Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport, the signs disappear. GPS is also confused. How do you manage a “U” turn on a four-lane divided highway with no gaps in the barrier? It was probably the most stressful part of the whole trip.


Despite the airport, it was a great trip, and I saw my eighteen-month old grandson, Milo, for the first time.


I’m traveling again at the end of the year for my daughter’s wedding, and this time I think I’ll park off-site, and let the shuttle bus find the International Terminal.

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