Sometimes, like today, I feel like a smoothly functioning machine, all cylinders effortlessly providing the power to move me through a day that has one task after another to be accomplished, some simultaneously, it seems. I marvel at this ability to answer phones, do Internet research, talk and joke with co-workers, work on a project that has to be sent off in a series of e-mails, remember to write a going-away card for someone, attend a farewell lunch, answers more questions, write, pick up the phone, answer e-mail and voice mail...on and on.

Today was so busy that it seemed as if I was caught up a swirling tempest of activitity, little tasks and big ones, one right after another, that had to be done and when done, were to be replaced by other tasks that had to be accomplished. All in a ceaseless movement, orchestrated by me in some kind of orderly fashion, but yet part of an unconscious design, too. It all had to be done, and therefore, it would be. I felt myself doing too much, and yet I was so caught up in it all that I couldn’t stop and slow down. People were depending on me. I was depending on myself. The day passed liked a speeding arrow.

At one point, after two hours of work on an e-mail, I sat back, pressed the send button, and discovered, without any notice or warning, that I had been timed out, logged off, and with that fateful click, lost everything I had been working on. I struggled with my disbelief and anger only momentarily, received some knowing sympathy from a co-worker, and then went to my desk, opened a fresh template, and by sheer force of will rewrote the whole thing plus anther e-mail in one hour flat. Afterwards, I wondered: where on earth did I find the means and strength to do all that?

Three and one half hours later, after sitting by the waters of a tidal creek near the beach to eat seafood, wind buffeting me off the marsh, I at last began to wind down, slowed by both necessity and pleasant surroundings. I wasn’t a machine anymore, flawlessly energized, pistons firing.

Walking on the beach as darkness fell, calm now, ocean sounds greeting the twilight, the day was past. The elements seemed joined in proper perspective -- the darkening sky, the land, the sea. All was harmony with nature. The day just past was harmonized only to some frantic human clock of schedules, deadlines, people waiting for answers and replies. Fortunately, I was able to reply. But on that brief oceanside walk this evening, I didn’t have to listen to anything but the wind and the waves.