When we depart in nine days now I want to write a bit, but not too much, and I want to do it every day. What I intend to do is be particular about what I put down on paper. Every day I’ll put a pen to paper briefly about:
Logistics and reality
Remaining active and fit on vacation
Food and entertainment, but only if it’s interesting
Opportunities for rest and relaxation, in the literal sense
What experiences in the moment inspired the strongest emotions
Logistics. This is actually the least most important subject. You can learn this anywhere, but it is essential to having time to have fun and remaining stress-free. What are the logistics of being where you are? Was the ride smooth or bumpy? Was it warm or cold or wet? Were the seas rough?
After the storm
How to remain active. Particularly true on package tours and / or cruises. How do you remain healthy? How do you stay young? How do you keep up your fitness program rather than gaining weight?
Waiting for a jazz show in Manhattan
Then, the opposite – food and entertainment. Did you see a band play? Did you see a show? Write about it if it’s interesting. Don’t right about it, except in passing, if it is just background music. If you decided to follow them on social media write about it. Same with the food. Once you’ve established the same dull habit of a bowl of fruit and yogurt in the room for breakfast every day no matter how much joy it brings you, don’t write a photo, but if you went to Morimoto’s latest or you found the freshest oysters in whatever strange country you’re visiting, go ahead share a photo and write.
Navajas
The next is where I am going to get controversial. I want to keep track of how I stayed well-rested. If you’re going to go on extended travels, you need to track your energy levels. Otherwise, you’re going to get sick. Fortunately, we have modern technology on our side.
Finally, this is what matters most. What did you see or experience that inspired you today? What was that one moment? Was it a flash of light across the sky? Or the sound your footsteps made in an alley on cobblestones? What will you remember the most about being there, away from home?
The weekend after Halloween seems to be when everything changes around here. The leaves start to fall, slowly, so now there is routine raking; it‘s decidedly chilly at night and jacket weather still in the daytime; and finally the garden starts to die off even if there is no frost yet. Days are simply too short for tomatoes to grow quickly. Oh, and it is 63 days until the next great adventure, but more about that later. For now, we spend the days working and preparing for winter.
I‘m trying to get to a state where what I eat is sustainably healthy. In other words, I‘m avoiding fried foods and some things that are unhealthy for me (emphasis on some as there is still a lot of Halloween candy in the house). For breakfast I had a bowl of cereal, orange juice, and a banana. Lunch was P.F. Chiang‘s General Tso‘s Chicken, delivered. I should have ordered the lunch portion but I accidentally ordered a full dinner portion. As a result, I now have a stomach ache, something that isn‘t good because when I get a stomach ache from chicken it tends to linger on for a day. And finally, dinner just has not happened yet. I‘ll probably have something healthy when I get home like some fruit, maybe an apple or two. Definitely not candy.
Today was a mixed day of reading cruise blogs, work meetings and training (we‘re taking sales training that requires role playing), and yard work. I‘m actually rebuilding the surround to my garden bed, something which requires sawing 4×4 lumber to fit. So far I have managed to build more than half the new bed without sawing anything other than wood. And then there were a couple of meetings regarding my kids‘ mental health and a visit to the hospital for one kid who is on a mental health side quest. That‘s the way he puts it – it‘s a side quest. I‘m content with that statement and I am also looking at this current incident as merely a setback. We will be back to normal before long.
For me, Mondays are the busiest day of the week. Whereas at one time I would come home and collapse on Monday, instead Mondays are now fast and furious and extend from waking up early to an evening piano lesson, first one for my daughter and then one for me. I finally get to relax after dog walk around 9:30pm. The nice thing about this arrangement is it allows me to not contribute to society on Tuesday and Wednesday nights guilt-free. It also gives me a sense of accomplishment, the piano playing part at least. We‘re going on nine years of piano lessons for my daughter and about eight years for me. She is by far the better player once she learned how to learn and once my friend Jessica learned how to teach her. She does indeed have a very interesting way of learning.
Anyway, the conclusion here is I am focusing on the day to day for another sixty days along with some travel preparation here and there, and I am fine with this (I rarely focus on the day to day for this long). I am fine with this as we are embarking on a fairly significant adventure in January. We also have some other draft plans for adventures over the next three years akin to accomplishing a good portion of our bucket list in this time period. What we hope to accomplish is something that truly amazes me as we have built a life that allows this, yet we also have already accomplished so much.
For this reason I decided to start writing about it. I am focusing on a format that I think will work when the time comes that we are traveling. My draft, for now, is five paragraphs or five quick sections. I‘ll start with an introduction to the day to kick off what I have been thinking about.
Home
Second, I‘ll main sentences of body. I would start with what I ate or what our meals looked like. Especially when traveling I feel this is something we focus on a lot because food is such an interesting part of culture – as is drink. In a quick day this can be a paragraph but in a busy day or a day with a “foodie adventure” it can be more. After the food I will talk about major events from the day. And then I‘ll scroll to the evening. Hopefully this will be when I gather my thoughts for the day but it may be more likely to do that on the following day. Anyway, this is when I will begin to understand what the day was about.
And then a conclusion. So what? What did it all mean? Was it a good day? Yes, honestly it was. No, not everything is going as planned, but today was a good day.
In Retrospect 