What a day it has been! I was wheels up for Eau Claire by 4:45am and didn’t get back home until 6:15pm this evening. It was a long one, no question. That said, I’m thankful for busting my butt for an extended period of time today.
I don’t have many marathon days like this anymore. They seem to only come up in weeks like this when it’s already a short week,I’ve got another short week ahead of me, and I’ve got a handful of projects I’d like to wrap up. I often think of time like this as a sprint. There’s a finite starting and finish line. During that time it is 100% go time. It is exhausting but well worth the reward at the end of the finish line. Run hard, push through, and then enjoy the spoils of victory.
In this case the finish line is a long weekend of hiking in Colorado. That expo with the boys will be well worth the price of long days.
Yes, it is tiring and trying at times, but it also provides me an opportunity to focus on essentialism and efficiency. Through our most challenging times we often find our greatest rewards. I’m worn out today, but in a wonderful way, much like the muscle exhaustion after a great lifting session. Off to bed soon, wake up, run, and do it all over again. I’m ready!
Over the past month or so I’ve been listening to The Bible in a Year podcast on an almost daily basis. The past nine months have included a reading of The Daily Stoic most mornings. Over the past year I’ve read a book related to Buddhism, listened to podcasts from an atheist, spend time alone in quiet thought, and had many other moments of learning from a wide variety of other resources. What’s interesting to me is how much so many of them have in common at their core.
There is so much divisiveness in the medias – both news and social. So often it seems that people are more interested in pointing out why someone is wrong rather than listening to where they are coming from. Quick to judge, slow to listen, more talk than action.
What I’m grateful for today is the eclectic mix of resources I’ve been consuming over the past year or so. On listening to each there’ve been times when my disagreements in their beliefs were deepened as well as times when I saw the other side through a completely different light which made sense. Many times I’m left with more questions than answers and I can feel my mind twisting as it starts to maintain three or more opposing views at the same time. The strain is wild but so wonderful in a growth sort of way.
As I alluded to earlier there’s one thing more than any other that resonates louder than anything else…. their commonalities.
Be kind to others and the earth. Love one another as we wish to be loved.
Be humble and remember our tiny place for just a flash in the giant universe which lasts for eternity.
Be strong and courageous to do right in the world.
Be silent and still to hear our true voice.
Be love.
While we may argue and disagree about what largely amounts to semantics the five lessons above are universal. Living into them is the difficult part.
As I see more and more of the common ground I more clearly see the gap between who I am and who I am called to be. The gap is larger than I carr to admit, but with the other side in sight I can take one step at a time to get there.
Over the past few nights I’ve been very thankful for something that my younger self would have seen as being insanely lame… I’ve gone to bed way early! Not gonna lie, it’s been fantastic 🙂
With the boys out of town there’s not a lot of craziness in our house, no driving to be done, no chaos, less cooking, and so on. While I definitely miss the boys, one of the benefits has been the ability to go to bed really early without having any regrets about it. I’m particularly thankful for my sleep mask as well – it’s been very nice to slip on when the light through the curtains would normally keep me awake.
This evening after supper the clouds were dark to our north but there was no impending rain on the radar. Becky and I figured we’d take our chances and went out for a bonus walk with the dogs. The heat and busy-ness of life have slowed the number of evening walks we’ve had recently, getting outside to enjoy a little bonus fresh air was fantastic. Taking a walk after a meal always feels wonderful!
Speaking of supper, I’m grateful for Festival Foods’s meat department. They currently offer bison steaks and the bison strip has to be one of my all time favorite steaks to grill at home. Deelish!!!
Not too long after finishing this blog I’ll head off to bed. I’ve been spending a little extra time reading in bed each night to help quiet my brain down before I close my eyes. The read I’ve been chilling to lately is Discourses and Selected Readings by Epictetus. It’s the perfect thought provoking book to leave some deep last thoughts in my head before sleep.
First things first, isn’t it nice to have a Monday that feels like a Sunday? How wonderful to have a bonus day at home over the weekend. What’s funny is that I still spent more than a few hours on work during the weekend, but it felt so much better as it was something I was choosing to do rather feeling as I had to.
Late last week Mom called and asked what we had planned for the weekend. As luck would have it our schedules both lined up perfectly and she came down to hang out with Becky and I today. We spent the day hanging out at the house, heading out on the boat, and then went out for dinner before she started making the trek back up north.
I had such a great time just hanging out and catching up with Mom. Our schedules haven’t meshed up so well recently and this was so much better than a short phone call. We were able to shoot the bull, talk work and life, chill, think up future vacations, and joke around. Being able to do that in person and on the boat in the sun made it all the more perfect.
As busy as life is for all of us I’m more and more grateful for these times we have to chill and spend some quality time together. Having COVID firmly in the rearview also helps us see that this will quickly become more and more of the normal we’d been so used to in the past. Spending time together in person like this was amazingly awesome and I’m thankful for this extra time I had with her today!
Not from today, but a good one of the three of us 🙂
The morning started with sleeping in and feeling totally rested (before 7am). Becky and I took the dogs for a walk by the spillway before it got too hot for them. We then loaded up our bikes and went for an unexpectedly long bike ride to Trempealeau for a couple of hours.
Shower up, get a little done around the house, eat lunch, and head to a very quiet grocery store for our weekly shopping. Head home, get some work done that I’ve been looking forward to for a while, and then eat some supper of meats, cheeses, and crackers – the ultimate chill dinner.
Bust out some games for the two of us, joke around, and enjoy the deep state of chill.
Call it an early bed, type a blog, read a book for a little bit, and then asleep by 9pm before the fireworks start.
The entire day has been lived in a deep state of chill, exactly what I had hoped for on our first day of Becky being back home and the boys starting their next adventure.
I am also beyond thankful for finding someone who’s got a twisted sense of relaxing and chilling like me. I’m still not sure how I happened to find someone who so perfectly fits. To quote the romantic film Deadpool:
“We’re like two jigsaw pieces-weird curvy edges. Put them together and you can see the picture on top.”
Wade & Vanessa in Deadpool
Off to bed, a great night of sleep, and another chill day tomorrow!
I am both extremely grateful for and jealous of the summer of outdoor adventures our boys have planned this year. Just over a week ago we were returning back from a weeklong backpacking trip to Isle Royale. A few weeks before that they were on a long weekend of backpacking in the Porcupine Mountains. Tomorrow they head off on a week of canoeing with Grandpa and some of their cousins in the Boundary Waters. Shortly after is a few days of hiking up a couple mountains in Colorado over a long weekend. Throw in additional camping and whatnot and they are booked up with outdoor excitement.
I’m not even sure which specific part I’m most thankful for today. They will make some incredible memories. Their already deep appreciation of the outdoors has grown stronger already this summer. They are active and out enjoying life rather than living behind a screen. The skills they spare learning about hiking, camping, and wilderness survival are outstanding and will be useful all their days. All those positives are amazing!
At the end of the day I’m so stoked about how excited they are for each adventure, the smiles they have seemingly constantly on their faces, and knowing they’re creating a lifetime of memories in a single summer. I’m getting more excited for semi-retired life at some point to see if I can match their level of excitement alone summer in the future.
They’re hitting this next adventure without me, but I’m still so grateful for this and all of the other crazy outdoor adventures they have this summer.
Not gonna lie, I love the days that are a nonstop blur from start through stop. I’ve been up and moving since 4am and haven’t had a moment to relax until now. Blogging from bed has become a more and more common thing and I’m very much okay with that. Tomorrow will have many hours of drive time, I’ll relax then. In the meantime I’m grateful for the constant forward motion of today.
For sure, much of the day involved a great deal of fun with my Winona work family and it really didn’t feel like work. Every year we pause at the halfway point to see how we’ve done and where we’re going for the rest of the year. We get out of the office, talk business outside of the suction of the daily whirlwind, and find ways to be more successful. Once we’ve got the tracks laid we head out for some fun. This year’s event included an escape room, axe throwing, and a delicious supper. My voice feels a little strained from all the laughing, it was so much fun!
Afterwards I met up with the boys after soccer practice for a little bonus fun for them and their team. Spending time watching my boys hang out with the friends was kind of surreal. Seeing them have fun like that reminded me of so many summer nights hanging out with my friends back in the day.
Once we were home we moved right into packing mode to make sure they are both prepped for their upcoming canoe trip. For a while we were all pretty scattered and headed in different directions but we then got into a rhythm and got everything all ready. Throw in some jokes and laughs and it was a fun time.
Now I’m going to crash. My eyelids are heavy and I’ll be out before the light turns out. I’m exhausted, but in an awesomely rewarding way…
If you’ve done some running in the past you most likely know what I’m talking about today. Thank goodness it is an extreme rarity!
This morning when my alarm went off I was instantly wide awake. All systems were go and I was ready to start my day. When I got my shoes on and was about to head out for a run something just seemed off. My legs were tired. Both of my Achilles were stiff and sore. My body felt flat. Everything was off a bit.
I thought everything would loosen up when I started running so off I went. Instead of loosening up everything just got more tight, more tired, and more sore. My first mile was resoundingly miserable.
Sometimes it takes a while to knock the rust off. After a mile or so I find my groove and then I’m good to go for the rest of the run. Maybe if I just kept going I’d hit that point and feel refreshed.
Nope. I continued to feel like crap. Nothing felt natural, I couldn’t get into my right rhythm, and everything was off. For sure, it sucked. There was no improving it this morning.
My run was miserable today… but I gritted it out. Even though it was a rough one I stuck with it and wrapped it up.
For clarity, I really appreciate all of the times when my runs go smoothly. That said, a miserable run like this once in a while is an appreciated gift. It provides me an opportunity to prove to myself that I can grit through the discomfort and misery. Anyone can run when it feels good, am I a person who will run even when it feels like crap? It reminds me that discomfort and pain are only temporary. It reminds me to appreciate all of the other runs that go so fluidly. When I finish a run like this I know I’ve grown.
My run this morning was miserable, but I completed it… and I appreciate it.
What a full day it has been! While nothing went too far off from what was initially expected and planned there were still several twists and turns I wasn’t quite expecting. As I wrote about a few days ago there’s something to be said about how long the state of vacation calm can withstand the onslaught of reality upon return. So far so good! All of the curveballs have been taken in stride and I continue to move forward.
Something that really struck me today was a quote that came from a podcast I’ve been listening to recently. One of the comments he made was that we need to escape to the wilderness sometimes in order to hear God more clearly. This especially hit home for me as I continue to stand in awe of just how much more clearly I was able to see the world when all the trappings of modern life were stripped away. My thoughts were so much more clear, everything seemed to make much more sense.
At various times throughout the day I caught myself pausing to enjoy the sound of silence. I paused and listened to my thoughts. In those moments I was able to see solutions to challenges and was able to react as I would like to react. The quiet gave the space I needed to truly process.
Some of the notes I wrote to myself today were:
I am called into the woods to strip away all the unnecessary in order to hear my true voice more clearly.
Stripping away complexity allows space to live simply, to be more clearly who we are called to be.
Is there a better mirror for the soul than time alone in a desert?
As I keep pulling this thought stream through my brain and soul I’m realizing more and more that there is something to stripping away the unnecessary. While I thoroughly enjoy the wilderness there isn’t really a need to escape to the wild to do have the same sensation. All I need is the willpower to walk away from everything in the world for a short moment to pause and reflect with empty hands, an empty head, and an open soul. I can create a desert for myself anywhere at anytime so long as I choose to and am willing to do so.
Today I’m thankful for the continuation of a thought process from my recent backpacking trip. Almost daily it seems as if another layer of the onion is peeled away and the next level is revealed. What an incredible gift!
One of the biggest takeaways I’ve extracted from my recent writing experiences and my backpacking trips is the importance of letting go in order to find what we need.
When I write there are times when I really force it out of me. Those are the blogs that seem almost mechanical and off and I can sense them from a mile away when I go back to review old posts. They are pretty much the worst examples of my writing and in so many ways are even worse than when I just cruise through a blog quickly to check the box and say it is done. How weird is that? In many ways it is when I try my hardest to write that the worst writing comes out.
When I relax, let my mind go, get into a state of peace and quiet, rest my fingers on the keyboard, and start typing the thoughts flow right through me. Of course I’ll have to go back and edit and whatnot, but even then the edits are minimal compared to other times. As my writing coach keeps reminding me, let it flow through me rather than from me. In those times I can lose myself in a total state of flow and not have any idea of how long I’ve been typing. When the flow of ideas is done I’m done, and not a moment earlier. In those moments writing is about as opposite of work as it could possibly be, it becomes a mini vacation for my brain and often leaves me grinning while I’m typing away. All this form letting go and letting it flow through me.
I’m a huge fan of interesting dichotomies. Where my brain has been working overtime recently is one that’s an odd struggle.
One of my core values is grit – passion and perseverance for a long term goal or dream. I often think of running a marathon as an example of what grit feels like. Grit is working through the difficult times, busting my butt, smiling while I do it, and knowing that each drop of sweat is one step closer to one of my dreams.
Over the years I’ve learned to appreciate the grind itself rather than just the sensation of completion at the end. The memory of the marathon I ran with Becky will last with last with me for eternity. I was so focused on the end goal (completing the marathon) and not on the journey (the training runs) that when the race was over I had a sense of emptiness and loss for a month. It was such a crazy sense of mourning as that goal was now gone even though it had been successfully accomplished. I was too fixated only on the end result and not enough on enjoying and appreciating the insanely hard work it took to get to that end in the first place.
Grit is all about pushing through the discomfort, busting my butt even when I don’t feel like it, especially when I don’t feel like it. It is willing myself to take the appropriate action to accomplish the goal or to at least move me one microscopic bit forward. It doesn’t feel easy, it is work.
So how do I balance these two thought processes?
As I get close to the completion of writing my book I am in a very odd spot. I know I need to grit it out to get it done, but when I bear down and push the only thing that comes out is poor writing. When I let the words flow through me as I relax and take my time to ease into it my writing is so much better, but it takes much more time and space to make that happen. Grit would see me block out an hour each day to write only to see less than satisfactory work, but work that would be done within a month or two. Flow would have me go off into solitude for a few days, to leave the world behind, work my brain through the process, and then spend several hours in a perfect state of flow before heading home.
What I could really use is a balance of both. How I find that balance is a struggle.
This photo seems so proper for this post, in many ways I’m thinking I may be looking at this a little wrong and they two are truly a part of a unified whole that I just need to look at differently.
What’s truly crazy about this is that I am loving every moment of the twisting and turning of this dichotomy in my brain. The discomfort is palpable, but so welcomed. When I am feeling this stretched and uncomfortable it is a sign that I am growing. As I work my way through this I will continue to learn and refine my practice to improve future writing. Yes, it seems daunting now, but through the difficulty and challenge is when I grow most. I’m excited to learn and move forward.
Thankful for Forty 