Funny how all I wanted to do when I was a kid was to stay up late. Now I’m excited to be in bed before .8:30 on a Friday!
Appreciation:
A handful of years ago one friend got a few of us to read a book he’d read. The first 2/3 were good but it then had about the worst ending ever. To this day we still joke about what half of us feel is the worst book ever and the other half are just wrong 😉 Fun to have this book to bond over!
Presence:
LOL – warming up in a very warm bed after volunteering outside at a cold track meet for a handful hours feels nothing short of glorious!
Great idea from a friend yesterday which has been firmly rooted in my brain:
Just start the PowerPoint with a plain black and white template and focus on the visuals later.
Amanda
This nugget was quite a revelation for me as I have a tendency to start building everything all at once and then end up spending too much time on creating something that will get cut as I wrap up the project. Amanda’s advice will definitely save me a lot of time AND will likely improve the quality of my presentations thanks to the additional focus on content.
Thanks Amanda!!!
Appreciation:
Wonderfully told stories are such gifts from their authors! I’m reading Micro by Michael Crichton a few chapters at a time before bed (thanks to Gavin for the recommendation). My current audiobook is one of my favorites, a book version of the perfectly broken in and comfy sweatshirt you were on a quiet and cool fall day – Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. Both stories are dynamic, wonderfully sci-fi, engaging, and full of relatable characters. Exactly what I needed after a handful of very intense nonfictions!
Presence:
Nothing like laughter with my teams! This afternoon I cracked up seeing the incredible artistic rendition one of my teammates created during their monthly team fun event!
Trust the process, appreciate the grind, put in the reps. So many similar nuggets of wisdom all pointing towards remembering that repeated hard work and grit leading to future success. It can become easy to lose hope, to get discouraged, and to want to quit – the moments in which we push through become the seeds of future success. Seeing the seeds of hard work starting to sprout has me all types of excited today!
Appreciation:
This morning started out with a wonderful surprise – the rain had stopped and Becky and I were able to get outside for our run! Somehow the weather improved overnight and was significantly warmer at 5am than it was when we got home from yoga last night. We had a nice, relaxing, and unseasonably and very pleasantly warm run to kick off the day after we’d gone to bed thinking we’d likely be hitting the treadmill. That positive energy just kept rolling through the day and led to many smiles and joy today!
Presence:
The moment when you realize you’ve made a positive impact on someone’s life is an awesome moment.
There is a time to capitulate to skipping a workout due to illness when getting the workout in would only set you back during to feeling worse longer.
There is a time to push through not feeling well to get a workout in because the workout will help kick the little bit of discomfort out of the way and leave you refreshed and feeling better.
Today I experienced both situations and made the right call both times!
Appreciation:
While going back through some old notes in a training binder from 2016 I stumbled upon a handful of index cards with notes from dear friends. There were a wonderful message in a bottle which really helped me in three different directions all at once and brightened my day!
Presence:
There was a fun moment at work today when I looked out my window and saw it was gloomy and raining. Rather than bring bummed I turned on my sun lamp and thought, “what perfect weather to buckle down and be extra productive!” It worked!
Today I needed a reminder to take a deep breath and slow down. I was moving so quickly that I completely called someone by the wrong name in an email. That one small action reminded me to pause.
Appreciation:
Funny how we sometimes get exactly what we need exactly when we need it. Today I was thinking about reaching out to a dear friend to ask her advice on a challenge I was facing. When I got to work and checked my email I literally laughed out loud when I saw her weekly email in my inbox. It was focused on exactly what I wanted to ask her about. What are the odds of that???
Presence:
Spending a few minutes at the track meet with some of the boys’ friends and catching up with them and what they’ve been up to was awesome! So much fun seeing how much they’re all growing up!
With selling our boat there were two big goals we had – sell it quickly rather than drag on the process and get a fair price for it. We did our research on the set up and set the price very fair. When I posted it this morning I wasn’t sure what to expect. Within two hours we had almost a dozen offers!
While part of me questioned whether I priced it too low or not I remembered to pause and consider the goal. Get it sold quickly and at a fair price. The asking price we threw out there was very fair and I would have been happy to get it. With as quickly as the offers came in I couldn’t help but wonder if I should have priced it lower. When this thought came up I just kept going back to the initial goal, why second guess what I thought was fair from the beginning?
The entire process has been a wonderful opportunity to learn about myself and my values. So thankful for remembering to set goals when I have the benefit of extra time, less emotion, and a clear head. In the heat of the moment it is so easy to second guess and reconsider, remember to think ahead and trust the plan.
Appreciation:
Selling the boat has been a bittersweet process. While it is time to move on as the boys have outgrown it and we want to move on to other water based adventures (canoeing and kayaking), there are so many family stories and memories tied up in the boat. For the past 14-ish years we’ve spent a ton of our spare summer time on boat as a family soaking up the sun, playing in the sand, and splashing in the water. Wrapping up this chapter brings back so many memories and emotion.
Who’d ever have thought you could go through a sort of grieving process over the loss of a boat? For sure, the metal itself isn’t a big deal, just the memories it symbolizes. When I remember that it is so much easier to let it go. The memories will live on regardless of if have it, and now someone else will have the opportunity to create more memories with their family.
Here’s to 14 years of a vessel for our family fun and bonding!
Presence:
Is there any better place to eat a family meal than outside on the deck? The weather today was PERFECT and we ate both lunch and supper outside in the sun. Gotta love how much better the food tastes when it is eaten outside!
I might sound like a bit of a broken record, but it is so nice hammering away on the projects we have planned for the weekend right away on Saturday morning. We had quite the list to knock out and started almost as soon as I got out of bed. It’s been a long day, but a very rewarding one AND we’ve got a lot less to take care of tomorrow – bring on the hiking!
Appreciation:
Our grill bit the dust a while back and we picked up a new one today. Out of nowhere Gavin appeared with a strong yearning to put it together! While Becky and I got other things done Gavin went to town and got the entire thing assembled. Nice having an assembler live and in person to take care of that for us today!
Presence:
Spending time outside in the sun made washing the boat such a more positive project today! Powerwashing went from a chore to a fun bonus project with weather like this!
My book continues to provide me with gifts at the most unexpected times. Gavin decided to start reading it yesterday and it’s been awesome to hear how much he is appreciating it.
Create rather than waste time. Make the most of the time I have as I did while writing, don’t let the precious little time we have slip away.
Appreciation:
Add some more dreams to the list! Faster than I can knock them off they are added. My never ending dream bucket always runneth over 😉
For reals, I’m grateful for the direction and drive my dream list provides. On days when I want to relax and slow down my dream list reminds me of the why behind hard work and action.
Presence:
Spending time with Gavin on a couple of errands this evening was priceless. In the most ordinary of times we have the opportunity to be fully present and engaged.
From Gavin this evening, “these are the moments we are supposed to cherish, aren’t they?” Yes, they are… and we did.
As I near the end of one notebook and prepare to move on to the next I can’t help be reminded myself to write down more of my thoughts than I think I will ever need. Thoughts come and go, sometimes even the best of them can seem to drift away. Paper and ink are cheap, capture the thought before it floats away.
Appreciation:
Picking up our boat is one of a few times each year I know I’ll get to spend time with my buddy Al. Today was another engaging conversation covering everything from travel to trucking to timber to tool benches to times gone by. Such a gift to spend time in a conversation like that!
Presence:
Sometimes a hug is the right way to go, glad I chose correctly today!
I got this text from my buddy Todd as I was waiting for Gavin to get called back to oral surgery to remove his wisdom teeth:
Do you guys ever think about what you would say to your younger self if you were to have a conversation with him?
I was thinking about that this morning and how profoundly different the conversation would be between me at 49 and 19 vs me at 39 and 19.
Man, I’ve changed a lot in the last 10 years.
Todd
This really hit me hard in a very positive way. My thoughts kept going back to that question over and over. Each conversation I had about work seemed to offer up another loose string to pull on this. Honestly, my thoughts aren’t distilled enough to answer it well. That said, here are some of the common threads I kept pulling at.
Would I rather offer advice or ask questions? My 19 year old self would likely not listen to advice, but he also likely wouldn’t have enough life experience to answer my questions well.
How much would I really want to change what was going to happen? Life has turned out rather well (as Vonnegut would suggest, as it always did, always does, and always will) largely due to having to fumble my way through without advice from my future self.
While there’s advice I would love to have given myself as a younger person – especially “don’t waste your freshman year of college on drinking and pursuing relationships with women, get outside and enjoy the beauty of the outdoors you’re surrounded by – I still came around to it later in life.
How much more progress would I have made towards living into my purpose had I asked myself one simple question each night before bed and wrote down and tracked my answers? “If I had only 10 more years to live, what would I stop doing today?” Would that exercise have shifted me further earlier?
All those thoughts and so many more continue to roll through my brain. I have a feeling this topic will come up again in the not too distant future.
Thankful for Forty 