I’m on the plane again! Mia and I are en route to Tortola
for the finish of the Caribbean 1500. We’re pretty sure that everyone else on
the plane is on the way to vacation. We won’t have much time to relax – the
first two boats are due in tomorrow morning around 2am, so we’ll get right to
it!
But this post is nothing about that. I don’t know what it’s
about. I’m listening to Jack White right now, which is where I got the title
from. I remember during my senior year of high school (we have our ten-year
anniversary in about two weeks) Adam Moerder’s band played that song at the
talent show. I don’t think anybody had a clue who the White Stripes were then,
save for Adam and his friends. I can’t wait to ask him about that when Ryan and
I chat with him for the podcast. It’s his song, after all, that is in the intro
of Two Inspired Guys. His band now is
called Mr. Dream. Check them out.
Speaking of the podcast, I listened to the episode with Nate
just now on the airplane. It’s slightly hard to hear him – he was on the phone
in the LA airport, while Ryan and I were on Skype at the other end – but the
episode is genuinely (I hope) hilarious. We spent a good 20 minutes or so
talking about Jerry Sandusky and what’s going on up at PSU (which is definitely
not funny), but then we sort of meander around, talking about his trip to LA,
about a couple movies, about our upcoming trip to Quebec. Lots of stuff. If
you’re one of our friends from Penn State, you’ll find it interesting. If you
know any of the three of us, you’ll (hopefully) find it funny. And if not, well
it’s worth a listen anyway. Nate will be a recurring guest host on the show,
the ‘Third’ Inspired Guy as we like to call him. He could have been in on it
altogether from the outset, but he said the podcast was a stupid idea.
Mia and I have been home in PA for the past couple of days
after driving home from Hampton on Tuesday night. It’s never enough time when
we’re home between trips like this. I love coming home, playing with the dogs,
riding my bike and just enjoying sprawling out in the house. You cannot
understand the relief of having a kitchen to use and groceries to buy after
having eaten three meals a day for fifteen days in a hotel restaurant or on the
street somewhere. I do like going out to eat, and I don’t want to sound
spoiled, but I would much rather cook.
We went to the farmer’s market on Thursday and bought a big
soup bone and a 1.75 lb chunk of beef roast and I made a slow-cooked beef stew
for my dad, mommom, pappap, Mia and I. Oatmeal, my dog, got what was left of
the bone after we ate the meat. She dropped it in the toilet later that night –
either on purpose to hide it from Lewis, my mom and dad’s dog, or simply
because she forgot to put it down when she went for a drink. Dad rescued and
rinsed it off for her.
I complained to Mia yesterday that I’m exhausted with
writing about stuff I have to write about, stuff I’m getting paid to write
about. I love it – don’t get me wrong – but I need to find a balance as well. I
started all of this right here, on this blog that I started way back in 2006,
and for no other reason than its what I felt like doing. Writing was an escape
for me then, a way to document my experiences, a way to reflect on how I felt
about my life, a way to talk to myself when I had something to think about. It’s
a side career now, a dream come true for me, but I write stuff like this less
and less, and I’m missing that. I read something I wrote in 2009 yesterday, and
I almost felt depressed reading it, like I’ve somehow lost the ability to write
like that, like I used to when there was no motivation beyond the process
itself. It saddened me.
Interestingly, and I suspect this is true of a lot of
writers, I like being by myself. I don’t often get lonely (sometimes I do when
Mia is gone for a while), and I need that time by myself to recharge. I have
this goal this winter to take the tent that my sister and Kevin got us for our
wedding and take Oatmeal out for a three-day hike in the forest, just the two
of us and that little camp stove and some coffee and soup. In fact I will do
that. Just the thought of it makes me
happy. There it is then. I’m doing it. And you’re not invited!
I reflected on this solitude two days ago out on my bicycle.
I only had time and enough daylight for a short 20-mile loop around Leesport,
but it was the first time in two-and-a-half weeks that I was physically by
myself and not surrounded by people. I smiled to myself, and cycled even
harder, thriving on that energy (it was the opposite of the morning the day
before. I was so tired from not getting good enough sleep for several nights in
a row that I turned into a monster the first morning home. Mia and I had a huge
fight, and I ended up going to sleep for 3 hours. I woke up refreshed and went
over to Dane’s gym to workout, feeling fantastic).
Incidentally, Mia had started tracking how I feel in the
morning in her calendar. I get a frown face when I wake up tired, a smiley face
when I wake up refreshed. I’m learning that to get really good sleep, I need to
turn the computer off at 6pm and relax for a while before bed. My brain is my
biggest ally and my biggest enemy – it’s flooded with all of these ideas, all
of these things I want to work on, all these things I want to do in my life.
But I have trouble shutting it off. I had a streak in Hampton of five or six
smiley faces in a row, and seemed to have figured out a good formula – limit
myself to two cups of coffee in the morning, don’t turn the computer on until
after breakfast, exercise sometime in the afternoon and turn the computer off
before dinner (and leave it off), and don’t drink more than one glass of wine
in the evening.
I’m doing it to myself today on the plane. I slept for 45
minutes or so as soon as we took off (we woke up at 4am this morning to get
brekky in and arrive at the airport on time). Then I woke up and started
thinking. Started thinking about people we can interview for the podcast and
what we can ask them. About my idea of doing a live podcast in front of my high
school, doing a sort of panel discussion with some of the people I graduated
with who have made careers following non-traditional paths and been successful
at it. Started thinking about what I was going to write in this space today,
specifically not for any reason other
than I wanted to write it. Started thinking about how Mia and I can make the
Caribbean 1500 better, this week in Tortola and going forward. Thinking about
Matt’s Ocean Research Project and how I can help get that off the ground.
There is so freaking
much to do! And I love it all! It’s a curse sometimes, especially when I
can’t sleep at night. And when I leave my paid writing projects to the last
minute and stress myself out trying to both get them done on time but also make
them as good as I possibly can. I didn’t even mention my bike shop idea. That’s
coming. It’s on the back burner right now (actually, it’s probably still
marinating in the fridge that is the far left corner of my brain), but it’ll
happen one day. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when you stay busy.
One last idea – I think I’d like to run a triathlon again in
the springtime. But I couldn’t find any online early enough in the season that
I could go. So how about a 30-mile ultra-marathon on the trails around Blue
Marsh Lake? I could get people to sign up for that, right? I’ll hike it first
this winter, just me and Oatmeal and my tent, and we’ll scout out the route. I’ll
probably (not) fall asleep tonight thinking about that.
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