Spring Reflections

It’s so easy to get out of the practice of things, even and perhaps especially the things that we enjoy doing. Then, as we look back, or at least I look back over these last nearly four months since I stopped making it a priority to write regularly, I try to figure out what I’ve done and the answer is not as much of the things I enjoy doing or want to be doing as I should be.

As for reasons, we all have our reasons: We get busy, we lose focus, we’re tired, we’re not inspired. Whatever they are, they’re both real and they are excuses.

Mine involve trying to dive in on work things to try and help that effort be effective and in that I was largely successful. At least in my part. We got out a big release, we’re working on patching that big release to address any leftover bugs that seems especially worrisome. We’ve started work on trying to figure out what our next set of work should be.

On the personal front, and this certainly affects my wife more than me but there is a certain amount of overflow, we are trying to help my in-laws as they struggle with all the things that come with getting older and requiring additional care and all the decisions that surround that effort.

I try to remember to stop when I can and figure out if I’m actually driving my life or my life is driving me and looking back over the first part of this year, the latter is certainly the case. I’ve been at the mercy of my life and my response to that has been to want to come home and just veg. My brain is tired, my brain is full and the idea of trying to muster the creative juices to even make a dinner seem like a struggle.

Spring has finally sprung around here, so the turn towards better weather will help, as does the change to Daylight Savings Time. More daylight means more opportunity to be outside and do other things.

I got to play my first week of volleyball for the season. I play outside on a sand court with some friends I’ve been playing with for more than 10 years that’s a few minutes from work. The good news for me – because I try not to take it for granted because some day I really won’t be able to keep playing, is that I can still move and jump, bump/set/spike in a way that doesn’t embarrass me, so that’s yet another win in the column for failing to accept the notion that I’m coming up on my 49th birthday.

Getting outside during that time is one of my favorite parts of any day, so the improving weather will hopefully mean more opportunities to get out at lunch and play. At a bare minimum, it makes it easier to get out for a two mile walk around work, which I’m trying to make my bare minimum requirement for exercise for a day. I’d like to either walk or play volleyball five of seven days and right now I’m averaging about half that, so there is room for improvement.

I’ve been playing too many video games, just another form of consuming instead of creating for me, roughly equivalent to watching television. I’ve been reading some but mostly fiction for enjoyment, which puts it in the bucket with the other forms of consumption.

I have successfully dropped out of Facebook. The account is still there, but I’m not checking it and not participating in it. Occasionally I feel as though I’m missing out on something or my wife will tell me something I didn’t know about that my kids are up to because I didn’t see it on Facebook.

Speaking of kids, mine are now both officially older than 21 (22 and soon to be 25) which officially, at least in my mind, makes them all grown up. Which, then, because all things have to come back to me, means I am really old to have two grown kids.

My daughter has joined a roller derby club, which when I tell friends of family, seems to be met with some combination of shock and/or horror. This, by the way, is in addition to doing a great job at work. I, on the other hand, am pretty tickled. I think it’s fantastic. It’s SO unexpected and wonderfully perfect for my daughter and I think it’s a spectacular plan. She worked at a skate rink during high school so she’s a pretty great skater. I think this will be a great confidence builder for her. Plus, she suffers a bit too much from inheriting her father’s tendency towards caution and I think this might help feel more comfortable kicking a bit of ass. They wear pads and helmets, so I’m no more concerned about her injuring herself than any any other active hobby and – it’s roller derby! How cool is that?! If that makes me a bad parent, I’ll take that. I think it is great!

My son is doing well back at school and is working through all the questions about what he wants to do and who he wants to be that are entirely the right questions for him to be asking at this point in his life and I’m proud of him for that. He’s working on himself and his life and where he wants to be and, speaking as a parent, that makes me proud.

In some ways it feels like my kids, at least from my outside view because I’m trying to not be in the middle of their lives as actively as I was when they were my primary responsibility, are living their lives in a more engaged and active way than I am if I let myself get tired or lazy.

All of this is a simple way to say it’s time to start setting myself some more engaged goals that lend themselves to more making and less consuming, more work/life balance, more focus on making sure I’m living my life in a healthy and engaged way that is meaningful to me. I don’t think I did a good job of that over the last almost four months. But, the good news, there’s always the opportunity to start fresh and do better.