Tag: leisure

May 10, 2023 – Stop and Smell the Oregon Grape?

May 10, 2023 /

Did you know that the state flower is the Oregon Grape? It puts on some small fruit about the size of a current or elderberry. I have never tasted it, I think it is more herblike or something that is probably used in very small quantities. The truth is, I have only ever seen it in planting strips and never in the wild. I didn’t realize that it actually flowers, but knowing that it fruits, it only makes sense.

You might say that my writing is themed lately. Some might say a broken record and others might say desperate or even whiny. But, life is busy. I can’t help that it feels like our schedule is a crushing weight. So, I have to find the silver linings in things. Today is one of them.

I suppose that you can say this is a different take on adventure that I wrote about last week. My wife says that I am glass half full. Which means that when I end up helping out by babysitting, my first reaction is all the things that I cant do. I know in my heart that what I am doing is the right thing to do which is why I hesitantly commit to doing it. I don’t know why I am wired this way, it just is the way that it is.

The saying “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is so true. It means make the best of a sub-optimal situation or even do something better with it. To me, giving up a day to entertain a five year old is a precious commitment. With a barn-burning schedule during the week I need some space to just be me.

Back when my wife and I were younger and we talked about a family, we were seriously considering having four kids. God had a different plan for us and circumstances dictated that we had two. Now that my kids are nearly adult age, I am entering my post child phase. I can see why older parents are much more laid back about kids because they know that you provide a safe and solid foundation and the rest will take care of itself.

Some kids are going to embrace and thrive in the freedom while others are going to take a while longer. I don’t think any any amount of baby sign language or pre-primary music/sports lessons are going to change that. Those things prove to the parents that they are committed to do what it takes to make their child successful, but nobody else. I do think that when parents are confident, so are the children but I am already way off track from where I want to go today.

When I commit to babysitting, I try to think outside the box. What have I been wanting to do but haven’t taken the time to do? On any given normal day I will keep myself busy all day long with all the tasks and projects that I want to do. I won’t necessarily go to the local bird refuge and walk the half mile gravel path or plan a picnic at a close by park. I won’t take the evening to walk the dog to the nearby dog park or pick dandelions out of a yard as we walk by. I won’t drive home the slow way using the ferry to cross the river.

This is the reason why I have never seen the Oregon Grape flower, because I have never stopped to look for them. I didn’t realize that I should. As much as I hate to admit this, God is giving me the message to try harder and life is more than a check-list of to dos. It sounds intuitive, right? But, this is my programming that I have to change.

Before you get the complete wrong idea, not every babysitting day is a whiz-bang trip. Sometimes, kids need to learn that adults need to do stuff that kids won’t enjoy. Sometimes kids need to participate in things that they won’t like. But, the whole thing is a balance. It shouldn’t be always one or the other and it certainly should be some of both.

During the summer of the time I was between jobs, I used to do something called adventure Thursdays. That was the day of the week that my wife worked from home so it got us out of the house. We drove around to parks in the county and waded in local creeks, explored roads, bought chocolates made by monks and just looked beyond the boundaries of our house. We stopped at signs and read them and took turns just to see where they went. It was nothing fancy, just something I wanted to do.

The whole eighteen months of me not working is starting to fade into memory. It is hard to think that I spent over a year with the freedom to take in life. I was a better and happier person while I was doing it and for doing it. I think today I would have to force my kids to come with me, not to do it by choice. I look back that those experiences were special. Not because they were grandiose but because the relationship of time and space is something we will never have again.

End Your Programming Routine: I don’t fancy myself as sentimental. That is not what this is about today. But, I talk plenty about doing things; my life is driven to doing things. Often, I forget that doing things is not the whole picture of living, just one aspect of it. I took this picture because I was awed by something I had never seen. Not just never seen but right in front of me never seen because my eyes weren’t open to something greater.

September 23, 2021 – Grab Bag or a Flaming Bag?

September 23, 2021 /

Even though I am going to the range tomorrow, I am out of mental energy to come up with an appropriate topic today for Tacticool Thursday. Hopefully, we will get my dad’s rifles sorted out finally after two years of trying. Hunting season starts in two weekends so it is time to get this finished.

I was listening to the Orvis Hunting and Shooting podcast the other day. I don’t remember the guest by name but I think that he was around 70 by the timeline of his life. He was talking about his childhood and how they would spend months out in the field. By my speculation, that means this was likely in the 1950s or 60s.

I started thinking about how life has changed since that time. For instance, I don’t know anyone that takes months off year over year unless you are a teacher, but certainly not in the fall. I also don’t know any kids that don’t attend school on a rigid schedule. The guest was also talking about how they had to live off of what they procured such as small game and fish. With all of today’s laws, that type of recreation would not be legal.

My mind wandered a bit more. From everything that I read about history, this kind of more leisurely lifestyle was more common earlier in the century. My how life has changed. Now, we can’t even take vacation without worrying that we are impacting our career. I am not going anywhere specific here, I am just lamenting that I cant even imagine taking months off a year.

One thing that my job hiatus taught me is that I need some downtime periodically. The difference between a week off and two years is night and day. It is almost as if one week off makes things worse because it is not like you can drop everything and pick it back up when you return.

Maybe it is the type of job that I have? Maybe if I was building houses rather than computer systems it would be better? I don’t really know because I have never worked a non-professional job longer than three months at a time. I have said this before that my favorite job was working as a janitor in college. It was a complete context switch between the lab and studying to just mop the floor. I feel that way about delivering for Amazon as well.

For me, having that time off allows me to reflect on what I could do differently so as not to have the same problems or experience in the future. I don’t think that there is enough time in a typical vacation to do that. There is also not enough time to resolve anything either. Maybe I should just take my own advice and accept the situation is what it is?

Another interesting topic came up in that conversation. It is the decline of the ‘outdoorsman’. As a result of the compression of time, people have become very specialized in their interest and less so a generalist. You think of people that identify as a hiker, trail-runner, mountain biker, hunter, or fisherman. Then you can break it down even further such as I am a bowhunter, big game hunter, upland bird hunter, duck hunter and everything has specific gear and seasons and dogs.

The point was made that people don’t need to know knots anymore because you can now buy a cheap ‘thing’ to replace what a knot would have done in the past. That all counts for some of the decline of general outdoor skills. I have heard it said that the number one tool for pioneers was the ax. With it you could blaze a trail, build a house, make other tools etc. I suppose if all I had was an ax, I could probably so some stuff I never thought possible. But, as of now I have no idea where to begin.

I thought that those things were interesting and thought provoking. I ran across this photo today and I am sure that it is not what the headline appears. That said, what a disgrace that our media uses to propagate this nonsense. I wonder if they were vaccinated?

End Your Programming Routine: Between my choices I am making and circumstance, I am exhausted. Today was kind of a free form writing as things come to mind. I am looking forward to spending my month out in the woods some day. At least I am looking for ways to add leisure back in my life if I can.