Am I supposed to have five 9′s?

I spent the last 12 days in my home state of California, and I had a lot of time to chill.  Do nothing, just chill.  At one point, I sat in a creek drinking coors light and burning the crap out of my legs.  Nothing is good.  Nothing is exactly what I needed.

Over my 12 days in California spent with family, close friends, and quite a bit of alone time, I realized that many of my friends are nomads.  We travel between intense moments with little to no rest.  Any free time is taken up by one or more hobbies, which are another set of intense activities.  We’re always on.

In my industry (the computer one, not the fitness one), we have a phrase called five 9′s, which means that a system needs to be available 99.999% of the time.  That’s practically all the time.  It’s the phrase we use to indicate that something has to be always on, it can’t go down, it can’t break.  I think I’m surrounded by five 9′s people, I think I’m one myself, and I think that’s horrible.

Why is it so bad?  Because the vast majority of those people (myself included), when the 0.001% downtime occurs, quickly realize that between all the stuff, the new friends, the old friends, and more stuff, they’re still alone.  We’re so over-stimulated that everything has to be done for time, for reps, maximal effort, everything we’ve got, nothing but the best.  Sometimes we need to just mail it in to bring some balance back.

In a world where most everything is noise, it’s really hard to find the signal.  It’s even harder if you never give yourself a chance.

So when I tweeted a while back about slowing down the game, it wasn’t just in relation to athletic endeavors (although at the time it was).  I think I need to spend more time “off,” because being on all the time is impossible.

I want to the find the signal.  First stop: get rid of the loneliness, it’s been around too long.