Holidays, birthdays and blogging

On December 2nd, 2012 I celebrated my 48th birthday. Time has really flown and I'm definitely on the back half of the golf course, heading very quickly to the 18th hole. Where has time gone? What have I been doing all this time? What did I build? What legacy will I leave the world that they might read, look at, touch, think about or even smell to say that I was here?

My birthday comes at a time when the entire planet is observing holidays. In the northern hemisphere it's too cold to do much, the harvest season is passed and the Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations are in full swing. I also know a lot of people with birthdays during this time. Birthday's are funny. Keeping score of how long you've been on the planet. Keeping a score that, for the most part, is quite meaningless. But as you turn over each milestone, you're forced to think of what that particular stage means. It begins to work on your mind more and more as each stage rolls over. You can say that initially, there's a "sense" that time is passing, but you're preoccupied with other things. You're preoccupied with ambition. Preoccupied with moving forward, with learning, with attaining skills, with watching and listening and enjoying. You're also preoccupied with planning.

And so you plan and strive and try. Try to get to that place and the only marker that you have to let you know whether or not you're moving towards your target is your birthday, or those recurrent holidays. Your birthday lets you know that time is passing and that you need to move a bit faster. Stop wasting time!

But something else happens. Conservatism sets in. Instead of the birthday indicating that you ought to take in more risk you begin to take an air of precaution. Time becomes precious. That commodity that you used to recklessly throw around becomes something that you carefully plan around. No longer do you have the luxury to try something and fail, again and again and again. You now spend a lot of time planning, working out scenarios, forming careful strategies, being extremely risk averse.

No longer taking the time to smell the coffee. This will come later. When goals are achieved (you say), or when I retire (you say). Not now, plans are in the making, leave me alone.

I guess it's meaningless to take stock, to look for progress using a smaller time scale, say an hour, or a day, or a week. That's why we wouldn't count the number of months old we are. Incidentally, I'm 576 months old, actually 577 months old as I write this since we're already past January 2nd. In just over a day, it will be February 2nd and I will be 578 months old. Counting birthdays in months seems like a lot more fun and gives you more opportunities to look back and wonder what happened that past month. That type of reflection is good, but a year is too far away.

And the same applies to holidays. For me, they serve only to pause the year. Christmas is a pause, like a race car pulling into a pit for refueling and a change of tires. At that time, the driver can catch a quick drink of water as well. National holidays are also pauses. For the most part, no work is done. You don't have to go into work and so you can spend time doing the things that you like to do. But for the most part, you discover that you're exhausted and you haven't learned to do anything outside of the job that you have. You spend so much time on the job that the job is the skill that you've learned. Not gardening. Not sewing. Not drawing and not even writing. Blogging.

It would be nice if we could continually be in a state of birthday, or holiday, or blogging. Taking stock all the time constantly looking and revising your plans. Not getting stuck in a rut but moving forward really quickly.

That's all for now. I'm anticipating a birthday in two days, please come and join me.

Happy New Year

It's January 29th, 2013, late in the day. I definitely didn't want January to slip by without wishing everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR. I had to squeak in this post.

2012 was great. Actually, 2012 was better than great and ended on a better note with the entire family, Janet, Andrew and Kaylah, mum, dad, brother, sisters, aunts and uncles all together. It was great being home since I spend the better part of the year all alone.

I didn't write much in 2012. You can tell from the blog posts that 2012 was very thin. I don't know why. I was so, so gung-ho in 2011. 43 posts that year! Almost one a week, I mean almost.

And 2011 was the year that I did the 5000 challenge. What's the 5000 challenge you ask? Well, the idea behind the 5000 challenge is to run 5000 km in the year. Since a year has 52 weeks, should you run 100 km each week you would run 5200 km in the year. So 5000 km is a lofty goal. I didn't quite make it. I almost did and would have if I hadn't gone to Kenya for my vacation at the end of the year (making it difficult to run). I got right up to 4,960 km. One marathon distance off my mark.

But 2011 taught me a very important lesson in perseverance, in determination and most importantly in setting goals. In taking things one day at a time. In having a target, but only worrying about the individual steps. No use worrying about the 1000'th km when you're starting out. But I did get injured. That was a lot to take on and so I really slowed it down in 2012.

We're finally in 2013 and it's speeding away. I don't make resolutions, but I have goals and targets. This year, it will be to try and simmer down (in Bob Marley's words). To take small bites, smaller than the ones in 2011. I've done a few toastmasters speeches on the notion of slowing down to speed up. There's a lesson there that needs to be expanded in 2013.

I finally finished this Happy New Year post, on January 31. Squeaked it in, you might say, but got it in anyway.

Cheers everyone, see you at the finish line!