Today’s calendar lists 3 people to call to talk about Lunch. Not that we actually “do” Lunch; we generally talk for about 6-12 months; I might get lucky with one of them and we’ll meet for an hour and then, even if it’s the weekend, that person will inevitably have to run back to his or her office. Considering that the traditional lunch hour is not always convenient, I always offer to step out at almost any time of the day except for the breakfast hours when I am busy sleeping. Sometimes I just get fed up, wait a few months for a change of season and then try again.
I have a better track record this past year flying across the world to meet people for Lunch in over a dozen countries be they in Beirut, Moscow, Kuwait or Buenos Aires. For that matter almost anywhere outside of New York City offers higher probabilities of Lunch although abroad Lunch might last all afternoon and continue through the end of the day depending on how much people tend to live to work or work to live. Even otherwise rational tourists to New York City are infected by this bug which attacks foreigners living in the City as well as native New Yorkers; this week I received a call from an Austrian consultant in Vienna who warned me that he would likely get so busy during his visit to the City he wouldn’t even have a chance to call or see me. I suppose I will see him when I take off a weekend to visit him and Vienna this fall.
Where is everyone running? I am a 32 year old attorney in a small but fine law firm and earn less than half of what these people (mostly lawyers and investment bankers in big firms) do. About 30% of my net salary goes into savings. Yet I have no problem taking 4 weeks a year of vacation (2 of them paid) to see friends and places all over the world and taking time out of every day to return phone calls and e-mail, send messages and gift packages, look up and maintain contact with old friends (who mostly never bother to advise people when their phone numbers and addresses change), take lunch outside the office, read the New York Times, monitor foreign publications and broadcasts on the Internet, watch the CBS Evening News and read several other weekly periodicals. And yes, I do have plenty of fun too and manage to keep my apartment and office clean, shampoo daily and sleep 8 hours a night.
OK, so maybe I’m a little nuts. My contact list is purposely and primitively typed on about a dozen sheets of paper in mostly random order forcing me to constantly look at lists of names I don’t need to call that minute just to keep the names in mind and occasionally call one of them up during a free moment. I admit that I never skimp on the phone calls and my annual bill is a couple thousand but well worth it since I can’t physically see everyone often; too bad so many of us are too cheap to pick up the phone to call someone long distance when there is almost no place on earth you can’t call for under $1 a minute. I make it easy for everyone else — I have a portable 800 number leading to wherever I work during the day and a permanent phone number in Miami that forwards calls to my New York residence or wherever I am at my expense; no one can say they can’t find me if I move. But so many people say they don’t know my number in New York though I’ve been here over 2 years. This excuse is so utterly lame especially coming from Ivy-League educated elites. HINT: Pick up a phone and dial 411. From a payphone it’s free. Or look me up on Internet 411 services. Even my e-mail address is user friendly and portable; it’s ivan@ciment.com
Some of my colleagues reading my travelogues and assorted odd e-mail memoranda wonder if I have a life. True, I’m not especially busy. But that’s precisely the point; I go out of my way not to be too busy so I can look after things I feel that really count, meaning the People part of Life. It’s so easy to skip lunch, not call people up and to essentially decide that the only people worth having contact with are the ones I am billing. I also have 20 things to do today and certainly can’t pretend to work unless I want to pretend to get paid. But having found myself with nothing to say to people I haven’t seen in 5 years at 5 year reunions, I’d like not to reach the age of 35 and find myself without any friends from beyond-professional life having been warned by people older than I that relationships neglected are relationships lost.
I just hope that all those too busy to stop now will in fact be able to enjoy life after 65; considering the track record of those I have seen come before me, I’m not banking on it either for myself or them.
Ivan Ciment is an attorney practicing in New York City.
