Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Working Around the Edges

      It occurred to me that many of my bucket list places to visit skirt the outer edges of populated areas.  I’ve written about a few places that are literally the edges – like the precipitous cliffs of Portugal and the easternmost point of the North American Continent in Cape St. Vincent, Newfoundland.  I love being in places like that, and I’ll continue to seek them out as long as I’m able to.

      I’m as eager to see Torngat Mountains National Park deep in Labrador as I am to see Paris.  I’m looking forward to visiting London later this year, but anticipate the Northern Highlands of Scotland just as much.  I want to see New Zealand as much or more than I want to see Hawaii.  And while I love the energy in New York City, I adore the stillness of a forest or the beach in winter.

      Perhaps I’m a loner at heart.  That doesn’t mean I don’t thrive around people, but I don’t need people to be content.  I appreciate solitude.  Which is a good thing since the bulk of my job puts me alone in a car or a hotel room.  I’ve become self-sufficient in travel, and in many parts of daily life.  Stick me by myself in a garden weeding and I’m just as happy as I am when I’m at a family party.  I think that level of contentment within your own mind is a good thing.  I don’t need noise to drown out my own thoughts.

      Maybe I should have been a lighthouse keeper.  Or a meteorologist on the summit of Mount Washington.  Or a solo through hiker on the Appalachian Trail.  But then again, I’m a traveling salesperson, a gardener, a solo walker, a rower.  Isolation isn’t the aim – I greatly enjoy those I’ve built my life around and banter with those I’ve just met – but when I need it it’s a welcome partner in my journey deep into the soul.

    • Super Worm Equinox Moon

      There’s a super worm equinox moon tonight.  Besides being a crazy pick-up line, it’s marking the beginning of spring in stunning fashion as it rose.  And the only way to have seen it was to be outside.  Too many people hole themselves up in their houses or offices, never being one with nature. That’s not me.  I prefer to be outside.  And I’ve felt the impact of Bodhi getting older as I don’t walk outside as much as I used to.

      I’m using the equinox as an occasion for change.  I’m getting outside more.  I’m rowing again – 5000 meters earlier this evening – more consistency with it going forward.  Fitness for me is strongly tied to the amount of outdoor time I carve out for myself.

      I thought about America’s Stonehenge when I saw the moon rising about the hills of New Hampshire tonight.  I imagine it was a hell of a show watching the super moon rising through the channel cut through the trees for just such an occasion.  I also thought if I’d planned better perhaps a picture of the moon rising out of the ocean would have been spectacular.  Alas, I didn’t plan, but I did have the opportunity to watch it rise.  That will have to be enough.

    • Scol!

      There’s a several scenes from my favorite movie Local Hero that I replay in my head.  This scene is on the beach, while Mac and the locals wait for Ben and Happer to finish their long meeting in the beach hut.  They all pour brandy into styrofoam cups and Mac offers a toast:

      Mac: “Well, sláinte, everybody.”
      Locals: “Eh? What?”  
      Mac: “Sláinte?”
      Russian: “skål!”
      Local Scot:  “Skol!”
      All:  “Cheers!”

      I’m familiar with sláinte.  And in fact I just wrote about it on St. Patrick’s Day.  But Scol was something I wondered about…  So I had to look it up of course.  According to the online Dictionary of Scots Language:

      Scol(l, Skoll, n. Also: scole, skole, scoall, scoill, skoill.
      [Only Sc. till the 19th c. Norw., Dan. skall, ON skál, whence also Scale n.1
      Perhaps, OED conjectures, ‘introduced through the visit of James VI to Denmark in 1589’.]

      A drink taken as evidence of the drinker’s good wishes for the welfare of another person or other persons; (a person’s) ‘health’; a toast; also, the cup or glass from which the health is drunk. Also, scoll of drink.

      As an American saying sláinte! in St. Patrick’s Day toasts it’s easy to feel a bit like you’re hijacking a phrase that doesn’t belong to you.  And maybe that’s why Mac’s toast and the local’s confused reaction resonates for me.  We’re all just posers borrowing clever phrases.  But since we’re all just raising a glass to the good health of those we’re with, I don’t think they’d mind all that much.

      A darker origin of the toast may come from the Vikings, who would drink from the skull of the tribal leader they just killed after battle.  This was a tribute to those who fought well but lost, and helped ensure that they would enter Valhalla.  They apparently would chant skol!  Skol!  Skol! as they went into battle, and then enjoy a toast to the fruits of their labor in the skull of the vanquished leader.  I think I’d prefer the styrofoam cup, thank you.

    • Networking Events

      Tonight I found myself at an industry event networking with a mix of people I’ve never met before and others I’ve known for years.  Normally I hold my own in events like this, but tonight I didn’t want to play the game.  But I try to be a professional, and professionalism dictated that I needed to participate in the event.

      “If you want to do anything in this world, it’s all about creating a vision for others to join.”

      Sell the vision.  Gain some measure of traction and engagement.  Repeat.  It’s the life in sales.  They say you can tell when a sales person’s heart isn’t into it.  Tomorrow is another day, and I plan on being dynamic and compelling in making my case for that vision.  But tonight I rest.

    • Sláinte

      Cheers.  Or to your good health.  Whatever.  “Sláinte” is your typical Gaelic toast when you clink glasses and have a drink with your best friends or your best friends for the moment.  So on this St. Patrick’s Day, let me take this moment to say sláinte to you!

       

    • Vera, Chuck and Dave

      That’s the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question.  The question is who are the grandchildren mentioned in The Beatles’ When I’m 64.  Vera, Chuck and Dave.  Once you know it you don’t forget it, and you hear the names every time you hear the song.  And I find that to be the case with many things.  Some things you learn and hold onto for a period of your life – like the subject matter for a quiz you took in school.  Most of it disappears into the gray matter of your brain.

      But then there are things you remember forever.  I’m not talking about the life moment stuff like the birth of a child or your wedding day, but the minutia of like that somehow holds enough meaning to stay locked in your memory bank ready to pull out at a moments notice.  Vera, Chuck and Dave are just that – trivial bits of information that stay with you once you learn them in a different way.

      This goes for visual memories as well.  I’ll never forget flying through the air in slow motion when I was hit by a car at the age of 10, or the expressions of the driver and his wife as I made my way to their windshield.  I was lucky to survive that flight, and I won’t forget it.  Nor should I – for better or worse, that was a highlight moment for all the wrong reasons.  What’s more interesting to me are the little, seemingly insignificant moments that I remember vividly years later, while things I wish I’d remember better disappear never to return again.

      Life is funny that way.  You can sing the lyrics of a song you haven’t heard in years, but you can’t remember what you said in your wedding vows.  I can remember a hundred other things from the day I got married, but I couldn’t tell you what I said in front of my bride and a couple of hundred friends and relatives.  But even though I can’t remember the words I’m certainly trying to live the vows anyway.

    • Woodpeckers and Daily Reading

      I’m trying to establish better habits – nothing new there, I’ve written about it before.  When I’m home, my morning habit starts with helping Bodhi get up and outside for a little relief.  I drink a pint of water and brew coffee while he’s outside, and read a little.  Simple start-the-engines stuff.

      I take stock of things.  Then read a bit of Daily Stoic, and a bit of Seth Godin.  Today, both had lines that stuck with me:

      “One day it will all make sense.” – Ryan Holiday

      “Whenever you find yourself blaming providence, turn it around in your mind and you will see that what has happened is in keeping with reason.” – Epictetus

      “We get what we remember, and we remember what we focus on.” – Seth Godin

      About the time I was reading the Seth blog I recognized that Bodhi had been out for awhile and it was time to help him up the stairs.  Walking outside, I heard the loud, rapid fire rap of a pileated woodpecker in the woods.  As if in response, I heard a second pileated woodpecker (they travel in pairs) making the same loud, rapid fire rap in response.  This repeated a couple of times before I went back inside, grateful for the reminder that not everything that matters is happening in my own head.

       

    • Getting Smarter

      “Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day – if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.”  
      – Charles T. Munger

      I’ve heard this quote a few times over the last few years, and try to live by this rule of consistent, incremental improvement over time.  But especially now.  Now I’m past the halfway mark on my hundred year odyssey.  I figure if family genes have anything to do with it I may suffer from some dementia at some point in my senior years.  I’m hoping that continuous learning combined with medical advancements in memory care multiplied by vibrant life experience will fend off the worst of it until I hit triple digits.  But hell, you just don’t know in this world do you?

      So every day I read.  Mostly non-fiction history or business books, but I mix in page-turner fictional novels along the way, and the occasional classic.  I read a daily dose of stoicism from Ryan Holiday.  I read a few articles in The Athletic or Sports Illustrated.  And God help me I keep an increasingly reluctant finger on the pulse of politics.

      And every day I write.  I journal a bit, but blog a bit more.  Life observations, history, conservationist ramblings, stoicism and hopefully some self-depreciating humor along the way.  Perhaps this will extend my memory and serve as a reminder should it falter someday.  Perhaps it will serve as the foundation for a book someday.  Time will tell.

      What I don’t do every day, but try to do most days, is to anchor my days in vibrant life experiences.  I’d be a fool if I said every day was vibrant, but every day offers experiences.  And I’m trying to suck the marrow out of each of them.  Hopefully I’ll remember most of it when I hit the century mark.

       

    • Snowy Lane Changes and Time Changes

      This morning we had a typical March snowstorm.  Heavy, wet snow that eventually turned to rain.  It was well-predicted that it would do exactly what it did.  Well, almost exactly.  The snow started a few hours earlier than originally expected, and that seemed to catch the world by surprise.  Throw in the “spring forward” aspect of Daylight Savings and the morning seemed upside down from the start.

      I spent the night on the Cape as I was worked late into the evening while trying to complete a project Saturday.  There was a lovely pink overcast sky but no precipitation, so I delayed my departure a bit longer to clean up the house a bit.  Leaving the house by 8 AM and believing the storm was tracking from the south, I had no idea that I’d be driving into a mess.  Even when sleet and snow started tapping on my windshield, I thought I’d eventually drive out of it.  Nope – it only got worse the closer I got to New Hampshire.

      With heavy snow well ahead of the plows, the roads quickly turned to crap.  The left lane was a fools paradise.  The middle and right lanes were each a pair of tire tracks, and the average speed dropped to about 45-50 MPH.  Passing very slow drivers involved slowing down, gradually crossing the chasm  of snow built up between the pairs of tire tracks, and then speeding up enough to move past the slower car.  Returning to your original lane involved the same procedure in reverse.  With that kind of drama it was no surprise that many drivers just opted to stay put in whatever lane they were in.

      Traffic was much heavier than you’d expect in a snowstorm like that, making me believe that I wasn’t the only one thrown off by the timing of the heaviest snow.  But despite the hazardous driving conditions, there were only two accidents on the route that I took through Boston – one on the Southeast Expressway and the other north of Boston in the Somerville area.  In both cases the cars were SUV’s whose driver’s clearly thought all wheel drive made them invincible.

      For all the driving I do, I only find myself in these kinds of conditions a few times per year now.  Weather forecasts tend to be more accurate, and experience has taught me to time my drives better.  Today was an exception, and thus a memorable morning.  Worst part of the drive was looking at the clock on the car’s dash and realizing I had to move it forward an hour.  But my car won’t let me do it while the car is moving so the lost hour mocked me the entire drive.

    • Routines & Systems

      “Routine is one of the most powerful tools for removing obstacles.  Without routine, the pull of nonessential distractions will overpower us.  But if we create a routine that enshrines the essentials, we will begin to execute them on autopilot.” – Greg McKeown

      I’m a big believer in established routines.  Unfortunately I’ve got a lazy routine established at the moment.  Not enough rowing, walking, burpees, and weights.  A few days ago I set out to re-establish a routine by starting small – ten burpees and ten push-ups.  Just do them at the same time every morning, just after I get up, and once the routine is established start increasing the workload.

      James Clear, in Atomic Habits, talks about focusing on a system, and not on goals.  I feel that’s about right too.  He also says it’s okay to miss, but don’t ever miss twice.  More good advice.  Of course, I missed more than twice, but who’s counting?  I should be.

      Last summer and fall I had a pretty solid routine that included fifty burpees per day, no matter what.  But then I injured my back, and that what mattered.  My back is back to normal again, but the routine of fifty burpees per day hasn’t reappeared.  Perhaps starting with ten and building back up again will do the trick.  After all, ten is way better than zero.