Ten Ways to Decompress Following a Hectic Week

This week proved itself a little hectic. Without going into too many details, I'll say that in the last six days I've helped manage the schedule of approximately two hundred folks in a pretty fluid high technology test environment, been isolated from email and internet connectivity for forty eight hours, gone to work at 0230 in the morning, and put in about eighty hours in "the office."

With the appearance of the first relatively calm day following that gauntlet, my thoughts turned to ways that I found useful in decompressing a bit from that high intensity time.

1.  Catch the sunrise.  Awakening before the crack of dawn ought to come with some advantages. In addition to pretty good compensation (which never really makes up for lost sleep, by the way), the sun will make an appearance and you should probably consider taking in the sights for a bit.

Gulf of Mexico Sunrise

Up before dawn, there were a series of things that called to be dealt with, but when I stepped outside for a moment, this is the vista that awaited. I stood in the moment and reveled in the perfection. The tone had been set for appreciating the other perfect (though less scenic) moments that would follow.

2.  Meditate. When you sit at a picnic table and stare at a point in space for twelve minutes (or so) as the frantic actions unfold around your reverie, a co-worker might eventually come up to you, tap you on the shoulder, and ask if you're alright. When they do, you might consider sharing with them the benefits of mindful meditation including but not limited to clearer conscious thought, a heightened sense of serenity, and lower blood pressure. They might show some interest, or they might leave you alone going forward. Either way, this is a win-win from my perspective.

3.  Don't catch the sunrise. There's something to be said for paying back some of that sleep debt you might have built up during the week. I'm staying at a hotel that's chose Arianna Huffington as their ambassador for a good night's rest. The staff even left a handy list of her eight tips for a better sleep. A quick Google search reveals that she's authored five, eight, twelve, and ten tip lists for a better sleep so it seems to me that she takes the topic pretty seriously.  The fact that four of the eight tips are part of my own daily practice is heartening. 

4.  Turn off the television.  I have not watched any television nine days. I don't miss it a bit. In today's connected world it is all but impossible to get away from what passes for news and current events, so my knowledge of what the talking heads have been endlessly yammering about over the last nine days have not escaped my attention (unfortunately). Keeping the television off has lessened the volume of their hyperventilating to a background murmur, and I find that it's much easier to stay in the moment and appreciate the things that are happening within about a meter of my existence. I saw a lizard on the front quarter panel of a Ram Hemi Truck this afternoon. Apparently one also secured their position as a presidential candidate and another is likely to follow shortly.

5.  Take a walk. I went to a park with a bluff overlooking the water today. It's one of my favorite haunts when I get a few hours of downtime in this neck of the woods. The weather was cool with a hint of warm humidity, the mosquitoes have not yet invaded in force, and I spent some quality time in the vicinity of some fellow travellers watching the world complete another revolution. It's just the kind of revolution that I can get behind.

6.  Eat something new. I found myself hankering for something a little sweet, but I didn't quite know what I wanted. Fortunately, I stumbled across a little bakery that was new to me, and they had some fresh lemon scones. Never having tried them before, I knew before they crossed my tongue they were going to hit just the right balance of sweet and tart. I was not disappointed.

7.  Say "Thank you" more often than usual. The bakery counterman asked me if he could help me, and since I didn't know what I was searching for I said, "I'm just poking around, but thanks for asking." This elicited a smile from him that brightened my day. The checkout girl with dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and a smattering of freckles beamed up as well when I thanked her for her help purchasing the scones. I don't know if saying "thank you" and meaning it brightened their day at all, but their smiles sure brightened mine.

8.  Get rid of excess stuff, and if you can swing it, give it away that might help someone else. 

Minimalism - Day 9 - Alabama

Some of this stuff went right in the trash. Let's face it, when you have two toothbrushes, it's time to part with the one that's worn out. Who needs more than one pair of nail clippers? When you drop a pair of work gloves in a toilet accidentally, you might want to think about tossing them in the bin. On a happier note, I returned The Lobster Chronicles to the Little Free Library that I borrowed it from about three weeks ago. It was a good read, and I recommend it to those who might be thinking of becoming a lobsterman (or woman) and are worried about the winters in Maine. The book didn't chase me away from that particular idea, although I might consider a summer lobster season in Maine followed by a winter season in the Caribbean. That book was joined in the little shed by When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. This book makes a compelling case for the argument that pain and uncertainty are harbingers of a person getting a little bit closer to the truth of their existence if you can muster the courage to lean into the discomfort. It was compelling, and I recommend taking a gander.

9.  Journal. It's what I do now, and I find that putting thoughts into typeface gets them out of my head where they're easier to manage.

10. Catch the sunset.

Sunset at The Bluffs - Fairhope, AL

It's been a long day, even if you chose not to catch the sunrise, and the revolution is over for now. Take a moment and feel the warm wind come off the bay. Watch the blues turn to greens and the hot yellow melt into orange and red.

Seahorse Sunset - Fairhope, AL

Know that you've done your best, and, whatever the outcome if you're like me at all, you'll be looking forward to the hopeful newness of another day tomorrow.

Train Stations

There is something about a train station that evokes a little thrill of adventure coupled with a bit of a sad nostalgia yearning for the reality of the image of simpler times. I walked down to Union Station today, and the white Vermont granite of the exterior seemed to capture the thrill and freedom of climbing into a mahogany and teak Pullman train car hauled by a fast locomotive toward points west.

Union Station - Washington, DC

I'll be headed out on the road again soon, but instead of eating roast beef and carrots and drinking coffee in the dining car on a multi-day trip accompanied by the rhythmic click and slap of the great iron steam pistons, I'll be climbing into an aluminum tube to be pushed past the ground five miles above the earth lulled to a shallow sleep by the pitched whine of twin turbofan engines.  

There is something to be said for being able to cover 1200 miles in about four hours, but today I was longing for the myth of simpler times. Times when travel was slower and instead of avoiding my fellow pilgrims we would exchange greetings and banter about whatever news we all brought from our smaller and somehow more isolated sections of the country.

After spending a few minutes dreaming of the open air freedom of travel in a rail car, I turned on my heel and headed back toward the river, relishing the lightning sky in the east and the gentle breeze on my forehead.

Tomorrow morning will bring a new set of dreams and visions, and I'm looking forward to seeing them unfold one moment at a time.

Watching the Day Perish

Getting back on the trail has been a slow process over the last four days, but with patience, I'm confident that hill will be conquered. One of the good things to come out of the experience is the opportunity to spend a little more time in places that I've normally just breezed past. The distances covered art not nearly as long, and the pace is certainly slower. That's not all bad since it gives the opportunity to see a little more, to linger a little longer, and if I'm lucky, get in a few more photos.

Severn River - Looking North

This morning dawned crisp and clear. The sun was shining, and the weather, though a bit nippy was about as good as could be hoped for in Maryland during the month of February.  I was hoping to capture some shots of the river iced over this year, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. We'll see how it plays out, but there is always next year.

Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard Bridge - Severn River

A friend of mine noted that the calm wind didn't make for very good sailing weather, and she's not wrong about that aspect of the morning.  I like the calm. The photos are better because of the reflections off the surface of the water, and it would be a glorious (though bracing) day for water skiing.  I'll have to share the tale of water skiing naked behind under the Hathaway Bridge someday. Today is not that day.

Abandoned Boat Slips - Severn River

Now that the days are getting longer and the sun is setting earlier, sunrises on the weekends are getting a bit harder to capture.  I'm up in time, but have other commitments so early morning lighting will be what's on the menu until next fall. Perhaps I'll catch a few dawns while on travel.

Crossing the Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard Bridge

The play of the sky and the water make the quality of light here in Annapolis a thing that competes with the best areas of southern Europe on the Mediterranean. One day, I hope to see these vistas from much, much higher up.

Hospital Point on the Severn River

The walk took me a little farther than I had planned, and my foot felt the burn. I'm pretty sure I didn't overdo things too much, but the freedom of the trail was calling, and pushing things just a bit seemed like it was worth a bit of discomfort. The morning ended my time on the trail, and that gave me the freedom to spend the sunset in a slightly different manner than has been my ambulatory habits of the past.

Sunset on Spa Creek

It takes some patience and a warm hat to fully experience the dying of a day. The warm hat is probably optional, but it proved to be an experience enhancing addition today. 

From the time this picture was taken, till the time the charcoal gray of the night sky had chased the warmth to the western horizon took just under an hour. I spend that time on the Eastport Bridge, looking west, and the experience is something that I think I'd like to repeat. I saw at least a dozen airplanes stream past. Their icy contrails were turned into orange fire as the refracted rays of the setting sun glinted off their lines in the sky. Like slowly moving meteors, the scribed their path to points south.

Spa Creek Sunset

As the blue of the sky faded to indigo, I saw duck and geese fly past with the bellies painted pink by the setting sun. As the death of the day unfolded, I was the only one on the bridge watching it happen. Cars rushed past behind me, and a large number of walkers stopped to snap a few shots. Time slowed down, and the distractions were easy to ignore. I don't get this kind of experience from watching an hour of television. Getting outside and seeing things happen at their natural pace is the only thing that makes me really want to come back and try to describe what it's like. The words are inadequate. The air was cool and the light breeze kept things antiseptic and not very nourishing. I actually loved the peppery heft that the man with the cigar brought to the scene. The fullness of that moment was fleeting as the breeze whisked it away up the creek. A couple of lovers stopped to canoodle up a few paces toward Eastport. A bit of hugging and a nuzzle or two, and they moved on inspired to come together but now stay for the end.

Nightfall on Spa Creek

The inky sky marched westward, and the charcoal blackness of night followed close at its heels. When I finally saw the last rays of the dying day slip below the horizon I turned to my car and walked back across the bridge with Jerry Macker. He's the best bass player in the state of Maryland according to his account anyway. He's certainly fallen on hard times, but it was great to make his acquaintance at the end of the day. He told me to look for him downtown this summer, and that he'd make every effort to play at the Eastport vs. Annapolis tug-o-war tournament. I'll look for him there. Meeting him and making the connection, however brief, was the gift of the day as it receded into history. 

Frenetic Friday

Rory and I were talking this morning about the unfolding of the holiday season and how our propensity for cramming a fairly large number of what would normally be enjoyable events into a rather compact time frame associated with "the holiday season" works at cross purposes to the relaxing camaraderie that those events should generate.  Today was a little like that, so instead of boring you with the gory details of trying to stuff too much fun into to small of a fun bag I'll let a couple of pictures tell the tale of the more enjoyable parts of the day.

Unsurprisingly, these are photos taken during two of three pedestrian periods I fit in around the baskets of holiday fun.

Anacostia Sunrise

This morning, the stillness of the air was perfect for capturing the reflection of the sunrise and the ex-USS Barry in the surface of the Anacostia River.  If you had asked me to draw or paint this scene a year ago, I strongly suspect that I would not have even noticed the reflections in the water much less been able to capture them in my rendering of the scene.  Today, though I still would struggle with representing the reflections, I definitely notice them all around me.  I attribute this "sensitivity" to observing the reflected directly to the time I"ve spent out on the trail plodding along.  I see reflections everywhere now, and not just while walking.  They are beautiful and exponentially increase the interest of any particular scene in my opinion.  If I hadn't slowed down a little,  I truly believe that in the interest of brevity my brain would have continued to filter this "excess" data being collected through my Mk 1 Mod 0 I-Ball.  I'm glad I slowed down.

Anacostia River Afternoon

On my lunch time amble, I tried to capture the same scene from this morning with afternoon lighting.  I think I did a pretty credible job of it, but I beleive the morning shot was probably taken a little (though not much) farther east than the afternoon shot.

As can be seen by the flag and the wind ripples on the water, the breeze had kicked up, and although I like the afternoon shot the muddied reflections off the water make the scene a little less interesting to me compared to the morning scene.

In spite of the drive to maximize fun to the point of fatigue, today was another enriching experience, and I look forward to another.