Culminating Moves

Labor Day this year was spent laboring at getting ready to move from the six bedroom five bath mini-mansion into the three bedroom one bath apartment. One reasonable conclusion for all this is that we have fare too much stuff, and it's doing a pretty good job of owning us right now. Frankly, it's a little grim, and I'm not sure we're going to be ready to fit it all into the smaller place that's headed our way later this week. The sun is setting (I hope) on the era of out greatest excess.

Sunset - Halligan Hall - United States Naval Academy

In spite of the stress involved, I really am hoping we can leverage this move into a more spiritual existence. Having fare too many material things has proven to be no real way to go about living in terms of being able to fulfill our spiritual purpose, and I really feel that this way of life has reached a crisis point.  Even on the third round of minimalism when I thought things might be winding down for me, I've found a pile of stuff that just needs to be shed in order to be a happier person.

Leading my family into this new way of life is proving challenging, but I hope this change in circumstance forced on us by people who were only seeking to do us harm flips the script and proves to be one of the best things that's happened to us in a awfully long time. It's hard to see how that's going to work from the chaos that's ensued over the last couple of days, but I remain hopeful.

Folks say that everything happens for a reason, and I'm hoping that tomorrow those truths reveal themselves in all of our lives.

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

It's been 20 years since I graduated from university. I don't know about other college graduates, but I left school thinking that I'd finally arrived. I knew I was inexperienced, but I also assumed that I had the knowledge and learning required to go forth and make a successful life and career.

Canoe U. Satellite Antenna

It turns out that there remained a whole world worth of learning to accomplish along the winding path that I took over the subsequent two decades. A short an far from comprehensive list of things I've learned since then include:

1. If you find yourself in a situation where you dislike someone because their job seems easier or more fulfilling or less tiresome than yours, maybe you should look into how you can get that job.

2. The value of persistence. I thought I was pretty bright. It turns out that there are quite a few witty, smart, charismatic folks out there in the wide world. What sets folks apart are the ones that make just a little more effort. You don't have to give 110%. That's horseshit, and I don't even really know how that would work. If you would have success, you'll work just a little bit harder than the person next to you. My hypothesis is that it only takes about 2%-4% more effort, but that effort needs to be over the long haul. I didn't really learn this facet of life early enough. If you're young and just getting started, just take my word for it. The value of compounding persistence is similar to the value of compounding interest. It's not really that difficult on any given day, but at the end of a decade you'll find yourself miles ahead.

3. If you find yourself in a situation where you think someone may be crazy, you'd do well to examine whether you might be the one who is crazy. This is especially true if the majority of the folks around you also think the one individual is crazy and the rest of you are sane. The parable of Saddam The Cat (which is a story for a different day) applies here.

Severn River Bridge - Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard - From Hospital Point - USNA

4. Every moment of your life is change. There is zero value in saying that you don't like change because fundamentally the smallest increment of time is empirically different from every other moment anyone has ever experienced. We're not living life. We're creating it every step of the way. Things rhyme of course, but living in the past is foolish and living in the fantasies of the future is equally ill informed. The only thing that exists is right now, and it lasts like a vapor until you invent the next small increment of the new now. This is important because NOTHING is ever as good or as bad as it seems. There is not permanence to anything, so if you find yourself having a terrible day, take a breath. Focus on the moment. Now...right now is your life really crashing down around your ears. Probably not. No matter what is happening, the air is probably sweet(ish), the ground under your feet is probably solid. Gravity still works, and there's another moment just around a quick corner that is an opportunity to invent a new reality. If you think something is bad, it's likely to be either fear (future looking) or regret (past looking). Since neither of these things actually exist, focusing on the moment will find you in a much better place than you IMAGINED you were experiencing.

5. Patience, forgiveness, and love are NEVER over rated. More on this later, but take my word for it in the interim.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow from a very good place right now.

Yesterday was the End of a Good Long Walking Streak

I didn't post anything yesterday, but it's important for me to acknowledge that yesterday ended a walking streak that included at least 1.5 miles of walking (only once did I go this short of a distance in a day) each day since 04 October 2014.  I don't know how many days that is, but it's probably in the vicinity of 450 days in a row.

The streak ended because I decided to rest my left foot which is experiencing shooting pains along the outside of the arch that have yet to be definitively diagnosed. The  X-Ray was inconclusive, which is reasonably good news, and I suspect a fifth metatarsal stress fracture or a ligament sprain/rupture of some sort.  I did manage to hobble down the the Anacostia River Walk and capture an image of the USS Barry.

 

Anacostia Afternoon Before the Blizzard of 2016 with USS Barry

The distance wasn't great enough to be counted on this jaunt, and my foot was on fire by the time I'd covered the round trip of about half a mile. That was it for the day and the end of a streak. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't keep it going. It was the right call, the rational thing to do, and I'm still not certain what kind of injury I'm dealing with now. Against all the rational arguments to end it here, for now anyway, I still feel like I've lost a little something that has come to define my daily existence.

Enough maudlin talk.  At the end of the afternoon today, I was able to make my way out to the front porch and capture the results to date of the Blizzard of 2016 currently being referred to as Snowzilla.

Snowzilla 2016

I haven't measured the depth, and I'm unlikely to take that scientific of an approach, but I guess that we've gotten pretty close to 20 inches of snow in the last 24 hours.  That smallish white lump near the street light is a Honda CRV, and I'm not dancing for in the streets at the prospect of shovelling it out tomorrow. It will have to be done, and it will be a good test of the impact of rest on the foot. Today was a good day for rest, and I actually have managed to pay down some of the sleep debt that I've been accumulating.

I'm looking forward to what tomorrow will hold.