Last Hurrah

I'm listening to the sound of the plows that finally have come to clear the snow, sleet and ice off my street. I wish they had gotten to it before I came back from work. Instead, I discovered how often and well my ABS worked on my car. Even then, I was careening around turns at even five miles per hour. It's pretty nasty out there, with the type of mix on the ground that ensures lots of accidents. I wanted to take a picture of the road conditions, but I didn't want to risk my camera in the sleeting rain.

I guess old man winter had to make his last hurrah before departing. According to the news, this is the seventh warmest winter on record since they started keeping records. I suppose this is one of those "once in a lifetime" phenomenons that we can recall at some future point. I remember when winter wasn't winter... Kind of like walking to school in four feet of snow, uphill in both directions when I was your age blah, blah, blah.

I think I'm going to make some tea and take an extended nap tonight. No work tonight on account of the weather. I'm kind of glad I don't have to do a load-in with weather like this. You can almost guarantee catching a cold in this mess.

I wish I could write like that...

I was looking over posts after the forced change over to see if they had been transferred correctly. I came across this gem of a post I hasd written about a year ago. I was amazed. I thought to myself, "Did I write this? It couldn't be me, it's perfect!"

The reason I had these thoughts is because this post concisely put everything I felt about this one subject in words without digressing or rambling. Everything tied in perfectly with each other. I brought several trains of thought together and by the end of the post, I had formed a unique idea that had meaning. It was balanced, poised, polished even. Probably the best post in the nearly two hundred posts I've put together in the past one and a half years.

As I read it, I wondered how I could consistently write like that. And I began to remeber how it happened. At the beginning of that year, I had ridden on a wild, wild rollercoaster of emotion, and had other people relying on me even when I could barely hold myself together. That was at the point where I had reached a precipice, just before everything in my life became really dark for me.

While I managed to weather that storm, I realized that there would be more dark moments in my life. More storms to harden my soul against, fighting to hold off the dark wave of despair. In fact, as I read the entire month of posts, I could see how close I came to breaking so many different times.

It's a pity that some of the people around me right now don't understand why I am different to them. If I were ever to show these posts to some of the people who know me then and know, they would understand. But the intimacy of these posts would end, because I am still that shy person, uncomfortable about sharing what I think and what I feel. In this relative anonymity, I can write what I really feel and need not defend myself against what others think.

So, I've remembered how I wrote like that. I was trying to stay afloat against wave after wave of adversity. This once, I think I won't wish for something that wouild make me better. Not because I couldn't withstand it again, but now that I know where that precipice is, there is no need to let myself near that edge just so that my literary genius can shine.

So Relaxed!

I spent the past three day doing things that didn't involve work, school work or dealing with clients. I was fortunate that I had decent weather most of the time I was off. Best of all, yesterday was such a beautiful day with temperatures that undoubtedly hit the sixties. By late last night, as I was playing pool with some friends, I realized that I had such a relaxed grin on my face because I was entirely enjoying the time I had given back to myself. Worries could and would have to wait until the next morning.

While I doubt I'm ready to go back into the crush of school and work, I don't have much choice if I want to achieve the goals I set for myself. I suppose I will have to take this extended respite as time to recharge. Here's a brief list of some things I did during this welcome break from the real world:

• Sleep waaaay past my normal wake up time
• Went hiking on a local state park trail
• Took pictures while on the trail
• Slept some more
• Played a mindless computer game loosely based on risk (ok it wasn't so mindless)
• Read a book that had been on my to read list
• Did a couple of crossword puzzles and some sudoku from the newspaper
  
• Did I mention sleep yet?
• Went to Panera bread and just watched people rushing about
• Cooked a tasty meal for myself
• Hiked another trail in another local state park
• Oh yeah, that sleep thing I may have mentioned previously

As you can clearly see, I collected plenty of sleep during these past three days, which is probably the real reason I am in such good spirits. I also avoided the regular people I see on a daily basis simply so that we all could get some breathing space. I renewed some friendships that had flagged as the hectic pace caught me up and carried me away from them. Otherwise, I avoided interaction with other human beings. So, we start the grind again on Monday.

But before I go, I leave you with this awesome picture I took while hiking. It is undisturbed (prior to my walking on it) trail still covered from the recent snow we received early last week. By the time I post this picture, that bit of winter wonderland will have already melted.
I apologize for all the watermarking, but Google's TOS is makes me leery of posting it without some restrictions on its commercial use.