When was the last time you had the summer off? I’ll assume that, like me, you had just received your learner’s permit somewhere in the first half of high school. I haven’t had 10 weeks off in a row since I was in high school, let alone the whole summer. That was two decades ago. Hell I haven’t had more than 2 weeks in a row off since college winter break.

Between junior and senior year of high school was the last time I played organized baseball, which until then, had consumed the majority of my free time and thought. For my high school affiliated American Legion team, I hit something like 8 triples (summer means no fences in the northeast for all the field sports to share the space) in 15 games that summer. I pitched for the first time since I was 9 (a great athletic regret would be why I didn’t pitch throughout my youth) and struck out 5 batters in 6 innings of work. I also gave up a bomb, but it was to my step-cousin - so I can’t be mad at that.

Now I’m 37 and just wrapped up a summer to my own devices - I can’t be the only one who always wished they had more time, who would do things differently if they could just get a breather from work. Thankfully, I just did.

Here’s what I learned after more than two months off as a thirty-seven year old, physician, husband, and man:

Time Waits for No Man

The summer of 2023 is waning now. It will never come back. You will never have the time back. You will never have the advantages of youth on your side: you will never be younger than you are right now. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”

Currently, there are no known methods to stop senescence. I can already tell that my body does not respond the same as it did 5, let alone 10, years ago to things like variations in diet, exercise, and sleep quality. Everything takes more time to reclaim as we age. And there is the challenge, time is finite. Options of spending your time are unlimited. Invest your time wisely. Or as Sam Harris has said: “Attention is the cash value of time. Everything is valuable only to the extent of how much attention you could pay to it.” X is only as valuable as the attention you pay to it.

Sunshine is Special

Not having to pray for sunshine in between night shifts, enjoying my time outdoors, less time forcing a tan and I’m sure my skin will thank me for that.

Prioritize Relationships

In spite of our own frustrations with IVF failures/challenges early in the summer, we have never been stronger as a partnership. We have continued to invest time in our shared vision for us in the present and the future. It is starting to pay off.

Save Your Money

I haven’t gotten paid. I am not working a contract, that’s how it works. Save your money! Otherwise this lifestyle can be a nightmare and not a personal improvement summer. We don’t live paycheck-to-paycheck, we have no debt, our cars are paid for, our housing is reasonable, and we are aligned on what is and what is not worth spending money on.

Sleep is Golden

I’ve never been an easy sleeper, a good sleeper. I shudder to judge so harshly, but it’s the truth. This summer, even with my mild baseline insomnia, I have woken up to an alarm less than a handful of times - most of those only to catch early flights. It has been remarkable how enjoyable it is to leave your phone in another room. I have nothing to think about besides sleeping my fill and then starting my day.

I drink less now than I used to - likely a product of having less to prove and fewer “party” friends. But a positive externality of less drinking is better sleep as well. But I am no teetotaler.

The benefits of social media, which are largely overwhelmed by the popular negatives (addiction, dependency, etc), largely center on the absolute exposure to voluminous content: so much more than you would ever be without the access provided by the interwebs. At this point in the evolution of the internet, we are still lucky to be within one degree of freedom from life-changing concepts, cultures, people, and creativity.

An hour ago, I stumbled onto a retweet, of a tweet, of an edit, of an animated short film created by artist Steve Cutts. Wonderful! Here is a link to the original animated short:

Here is my preferred edit:

Regardless, both version of Steve Cutt’s work are masterful and poignant. I was immediately riveted by the mood of the edited version’s music. The experience is much different from the Moby music. At least it seems that way to me.

Much like his other iconic works, including this with more than 60 million views at the time of this article, he is masterful at storytelling and pace and irony:

I’ll need to spend more time with more of his work (previous to today I admit to only having watched MAN years earlier), but his perspective seems incredibly genuine albeit cynical. The requirement of a great artist is to find a true perspective and trust what they see. Or at least that’s what I think I heard one time, long ago in the past. I am not an artist, but Steve Cutts is.

“Paint what you like and die happy” - Henry Miller

What is real to you might not be real to the zombie masses

But back to the tweet, edited version. I was floored. Why hadn’t I seen this earlier?, Have other people seen this?, Is there anyone alive in our social media age who doesn’t agree with the message in this animated short??!! How would disagreement even be possible?

Disclaimer: This horse has been beaten to death, but let me take a quick swing at it.

I can only imagine that what keeps most people from looking up and disconnecting for a moment - for getting his message, as it were - is ignorance. Maybe I grossly underestimate the population of people who are glued to the world behind their screen. I don’t mean people who are on their phones for hours a day. I am one of those. You probably are too. Go and check your screen on time since you took it off the charger this morning. The “actual” reality of life in many parts of the world is that technology is essential and largely irreplaceable. But just as many of us, you and I, are ignorant of our own usage, there are at least just as many of them, who are ignorant of their own ignorance surrounding the use of their phones, social media, and technology at large.

The world behind the screen and what it offers and represents is the difference. Some people are engrossed in their phone for indeterminate amounts of time and cannot help themselves to be satisfied with their daily happenings. The only way they add any color to their lives is via avatars and anonymity online. They eat, sleep, and breathe in black and white. The hypersaturated, hyperinjected, and hyperaddictive world on the other side of the screen can feel more real than anything that happens in flesh and blood. There everyone and everything is brighter, bolder, and never boring. It is entirely plausible, that these individuals have an expanded version of what you or I might consider to be real life. Whereas I would say things that occur on someone’s instagram feed do not constitute a part of my real life anymore than what happens to Lucy and Ethel on an episode of I Love Lucy.

In opposition, it seems plausible to think that those people in the video that we are discussing here would disagree: that the latest post or tweet from the celebrity they follow and its contents are actually included in the set of things that include their real life. Because of the addictive nature and obsessive repetition of such media, they somehow feel connected to the events that occur on the other side of the black mirror. This connection - whether neurochemically, habitually, or otherwise - is the bridge from the world we live and breathe in to the entertainment world on the other side.

For a lighter read, written in a different voice try my previous post about the origin of this blog:

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I started a blog. The blog still exists here:

https://tonynegroni.wordpress.com/

But as you can tell from a quick click, I never did much with it.

August 2008 was a wild time. I had just finished a summer as an RA in my NYU dorm. I was lucky that my boss gave me the gig since, you know, they don’t allow people who aren’t enrolled as students to work in student jobs. Somehow I was an exception. All I needed was a reason to stay in the city that summer before medical school. Anything was better than working at a telemarketing call-center back home again.

That summer interned at DRAFTFCB in their healthcare division as a copywriter I assume that I was paid, but I honestly can’t remember. At least rent was free in exchange for patrolling the halls 1 week a month. I wonder where all the people that I met that summer are now: my co-interns, bosses, the strange guy that I shared an office with...

So at the end of college I thought I was so cool because I discovered this drink that I really loved called the Negroni. It fit the bill as far as something I could put my personal stamp on: it was high in alcohol and bitter, so it wasn’t broadly likeable - at least at that time with early aught’s palates (well-crafted cocktails were nearly impossible to find - Death and Co only opened a year earlier if I recall); it was Italian, it rhymed with my name, and I liked it. BOOM. The spec is equal parts of gin, campari, and sweet vermouth usually combined and stirred with ice, strained, and served up. I think it is a dramatically improved cocktail when served “on the rocks,” as it were. In 2023, I doubt anyone has ever accidentally received a negroni served up. I’m sure this is part of the recent popularity.

If you clicked the link, then you already realize that I did nothing with the blog or the name Tony Negroni. Both were, and are, mistakes that I think about every few months to this day. My plan was to just post descriptions of anywhere I drank a negroni as a way of 1) finding where they make them well (back then it was about a 30% chance that the bartender would even know the spec) and 2) reviewing the nuances of that locale’s version. I didn’t even consider posting photos because I didn’t have a dedicated camera (my flip-phone camera was atrocious).

The site would have been a great undertaking. Now, knowing how blogs and social media changed things, it might have been a hit and opened up opportunities. Alas, I knew not what I knew not. I was buried in a mountain of memorization that first year of medical school and the rest is history. I’ve even changed my infamous twitter handle the mundane, but professional @thetonyvullo. That link is all that remains.

Now, 15 years later, my tastes have changed. I more often prefer the more refreshing, drier, less alcoholic Americano. But when I want to go FULL SEND, reviving the emotion and memory of city summers in the early aughts, I still ask for a “negroni on the rocks.”

P.S.

I remember I went to d.b.a. bar on 1st Avenue during the summer of 2007 maybe. I was just onto the negroni obsession. I still had campari behind the ears, as they say. I made the mistake of ordering a negroni from the bartender at a whiskey and beer bar. I got the very common, “what’s that?” “how do you make that?” etc. I was more than happy back then to educate and espouse the various healing qualities of the cocktail. A few minutes later I received the saddest version that I had ever seen: I paid $9 for a double shot glass full of dark red liquid. It was awful. I returned to my group in the back patio area and eyed everyone relaxed and sipping their frosty brews. They could see the dejection on my face. “I thought you said that drink is so easy to make?” I took the whole thing down in one gulp, “yeah, it should be.”