February finds me still in Denver. My mother is a having a very difficult time with chemo and I don’t feel it’s currently appropriate to make any plans for anything. Since I don’t really have to be anywhere I’m sticking around. When it comes to helping my mother, my sister and I make a good team. She tends to takes care of a lot of the Dr. Appointments, tracking meds, etc. I’m more of a nuts a bolts guy with shopping, taking care of things around the house, etc.
Denver is not a bad city but it certainly doesn’t appeal to me. It just doesn’t feel like my place. I miss warm humid coastal air. When I was younger I was always drawn to the mountains. Now as I get older I’m more drawn to the ocean. I could very well wind up spending my later years living in Hawaii or some tropical locale. Something about being near the ocean makes me feel better. Perhaps I’ll turn out to be one of those guys who buys a cheap old sail boat more for living in a funky old marina than sailing.
Aside of being available to help my mother I’ve been trying to make a little money buying and selling old stuff with limited success. I also try to make it to the mountains at least once a week but missed a couple of weeks due to the flu. I can’t remember the last time I had the flu but it kicked my butt for a few days. I usually get an annoying cold once a year but that’s about it. The flu kept me in bed all day which is something I don’t think has happened to me since I was a teen.
A real highlight of being in Colorado over the winter is when I get a chance to zip around Nordic trails up in the mountains. My favorite place to ski is Devils Thumb Ranch near Winter Park. With over 100km of finely groomed trails it’s a bit of a paradise for the cross country skier. Yesterday I spent 3 hours skiing the perimeter and then some. It was the first day I felt like I was done with the flu and my strength felt just about back to normal. As I climbed the hills, opened it up on the flats and let it go on the downhill’s I felt really blessed to be able to enjoy skiing so much. Technically I’m skiing quite well and I always maintain a decent level of fitness which greatly adds to the fun factor. In some ways Nordic skiing is kind of like swimming. If you don’t swim much and/or have poor technique it can be a chore swimming one lap. If you have good technique and are in reasonably fit condition you can swim mile after mile and actually enjoy it. Despite my distaste for cold weather I still like to ski.
As of late I have not been feeling particularly social nor have I been feeling creative at all. I feel like I’m living in the in between and it will be interesting to see how it all segues into the next chapter of life as I have no idea where things are headed at the current moment. In the process I have been simplifying my already simple life. Recently I exited the world of social media and am limiting my time on the internet to writing, email, and work related activity. I tired of Facebook and found it to be a little bit of a compulsion checking it several times a day. Facebook has it positives and negatives but I think social media is doing more to dilute the quality of relationships. People are spread thin as communication is limited to quick text messages and life is interpreted through out of context sound bites. Big opinions are based on very little as social media fosters abundant misunderstandings and quick inaccurate judgments of others.
The internet is a poor medium for discussing anything controversial and people in general have a difficult time understanding all sides of an issue. Facial expressions, tone of voice and overall demeanor can add a lot to a discussion. My general rule anymore is if I have anything important to address with anyone it's best to do it in person. I don’t even like talking on the phone when it comes to addressing a serious issue. Social media is teaching people how not to communicate properly in my opinion.
At the end of the day I've noticed that the only people who actually look me up in real life are those who either are not on Facebook or have little to do with it. I often joked that I had over 370 friends on Facebook and actually knew a couple. Something about it all seems kind of fake and superficial, so, I’ve decided to go back to life without social media for a while and see how it goes. Back to 2008.
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