Biting my fingernails? I do that less frequently now

A word of explanation about today's headline (well, actually a few words)...

(1) "I do that less frequently now" is a line from the old Nickelodeon series "iCarly" that is occasionally quoted in our family. It was originally uttered by Gibby, one of my favorite characters in TV history, in reference to the fact that, as the series went on, he didn't randomly take his shirt off nearly as often as he had in the show's first few seasons.

(2) I am a longtime nail biter. Here's a post from eight years ago in which I lamented this fact and sought ways to break the habit.

Nail biting is one of those things some of us do without even realizing we're doing it. I'll be proofreading something I've written at work, staring at my computer screen, and suddenly find myself chomping down on a long thumbnail. I don't remember putting my hand to my mouth, but there it is.

The result is that my nails always give the impression I make my living manually sorting through shards of broken glass and scrap metal. They're perpetually uneven, cracked, and bitten down lower than they should be.

Until recently, that is. Somehow I have found the discipline to stop biting. I will never be a hand model, but I have finally achieved some semblance of the semi-manicured, white crescent moon nails I see so many well-groomed men sporting.

It finally looks like I actually pay attention to my nails, which over the past month or so I guess I have.

But I'm running into the sorts of problems I previously associated only with women.

Like broken nails. I'm not growing lady nails or anything, but twice already I've found a nail starting to crack, forcing me to clip and file it down, and then having to wait for it to grow back again to match the length of its neighbors.

And rampant cuticles (NOTE: The Rampant Cuticles would be a good name for a band.) I'm constantly having to push those things down to keep them in check. I rarely worried about this in years past.

And how about the annoying click of nails on a computer keyboard? Again, I don't have Rihanna-length nails or anything, but there's just enough protruding nail to tap the keys as I bang out a blog post or a work email. Both the sound and the feeling are somewhat disconcerting.

I don't know how you longtime fingernail landscapers put up with it.

I have broken ingrained bad habits before, including my longstanding addiction to nose drops, so I know I can make this nail regimen last. It really doesn't take all that much effort.

But that's not to say I don't still consider taking a big bite out of the fast-growing nails on my ring fingers. For some reason those things sprout like weeds compared to my other nails.

It's still so tempting.

Everything is about to change. And that's a good thing.

I hope you didn't look at that headline and expect me to talk today about some sweeping trend or societal shift that's going to affect your life. I was talking about my own life. As far as I know, yours is likely to continue on its orderly (or not so orderly) way.

It's just that tomorrow is my first official day working at Goodyear, and I couldn't be happier about it. I'm going to resurrect a blog post from 2013 in which I talked about how I good I am at being the new guy in the office. I expect nothing different from this gig.

But the return of full-time employment also means a departure from the relatively leisurely schedule I've been enjoying for the past 3+ months. I get a lot done most days because I like being productive, but I've been able to do it all on my own time and at my own pace.

That changes tomorrow. Suddenly, I'm going to have meetings to attend again, some in person and some virtual. I'll have deadlines to hit and obligations to co-workers. I'm good with all of that, but when you've been away from it for a while, it takes some readjusting.

There's also the matter of a few leisure-time activities and how they're going to fit into the life of Working Scott vs. that of Unemployed Scott. Just to name three:

• The saxophone: I play my horn almost every day, and since January I've been doing online lessons with my teacher Ed every Monday at 5:30pm. Practice time will now have to be fit into a much smaller window during the evenings. And if I'm in the office on Mondays, I don't think I can get home in time for a 5:30 lesson. So something's going to have to change.
  
  
• Writing blog posts: Since April, I've been doing my blog writing every morning right after breakfast. That doesn't work on weekdays anymore, so again, we're looking at evening time for writing. My goal is to maintain an every-day blog, but I'll admit new jobs have gotten in the way of that in the past, so I don't know what's coming.
  
  
• P.A. announcing: I've made this work with full-time employment before, so it's not like this is new territory. But my office is now 44 miles from home, and there will undoubtedly be days I have to be there late. Again, like everything else, it's going to be a balancing act in which I'll occasionally be going directly from Akron to the Wickliffe High School press box without a stop at home to change or eat. I'll live.

It goes without saying that I would rather have a job than not have a job, but getting a taste of a semi-retired life when you're not yet in a position (age-wise or financially) to maintain it can be dangerous. The dose of discipline that comes with reentering the workforce is probably coming at just the right time.