A year of kicking back
Now that Xmas season is approaching, I was thinking about sending a holiday letter to friends and family. I know a lot of people hate those, but I like receiving them. Despite the fact that we all can be in constant touch via email, skype, IM, text, Facebook and video chat for free, I still find it interesting to hear what people are up to aside from what they ate for breakfast today.
But if you haven’t done anything, it’s kind of weird to send people a letter detailing what you didn’t do. Customarily, people yak about their kids, jobs, projects, travel, and hobbies since those things collectively absorb all our time, energy, and cash. Since we don’t have kids, I stick with the latter four.
Shirley’s done some neat things this year, but it’s been an uneventful one for me. I haven’t managed to do anything noteworthy at work, there have been no house projects, nor have we traveled anyplace special. This has even been an extraordinarily tame year cycling wise — fewest miles since 2001, fewest centuries since 2001, lowest average speeds since early 2002, no double centuries, and only one ride with over 10,000 feet of climbing. We did get a puppy, so I’m at least on even footing with many six year olds.
I’m was trying to figure out why not having anything to report bothered me since failure doesn’t bother me — the fact that I never win anything has never discouraged my competitive side, I don’t have any lofty career aspirations, and I think it’s important not to get distracted by the rat race.
In the end, I decided it was because I didn’t feel any different aside having aged one year. Taking it easy is not a bad thing, but just marking time is because we don’t have enough of it to squander. So the question is what to do next year — the normal midlife crisis things people do to kid themselves aren’t really any better. When you get right down to it, things are what you make of them, and I’m sure I have everything I actually need. I’ll see if I can make some hay out of that.