Waking up to lightning notifications and the rumble of thunder is a most excellent way to start the work week. Thank you, Mother Nature!
Be Inspired.
Earl suggested we enjoy the beautiful day and drive up nearby Mount Lemmon. I told him I wanted to do some reading and writing today, so I brought my computer along in case we found a place where I could do a few things I wanted to do. I found some inspiration at the Inspiration Point Picnic Area, near the top of Mount Lemmon.
‘Twas a beautiful moment.
It was about 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) cooler than the temperature at home, and it was quite breezy. I loved every moment of our stop there. The wind making its way through the evergreens was especially magical; I will never tire of that sound. In fact, I probably need to find a sound effect that replicates the pleasantries so if I’m feeling anxious at work or something I can spray some pine mist and listen to that sound on headphones.
Purple.
All of our street lights have turned purple. Apparently the coating used to standardize the light color has worn off the lights in the Arizona sun and subsequently now appear purple. It’s not on purpose.
I’m not convinced LED street lights are a good thing.
Spring!
It’s well into the 70s here in the Sonoran Desert and the sun is shining brightly. When I went on my hike earlier this morning I noticed a lot of the flora was starting to show some color and the like. One of the fastest running deer also shot by me early in my adventure this morning; I’m assuming they’re as excited about the nice weather as I am.
Earl asked me a couple of times this past week if I was going to shave and I did last night. I’m back to my previous facial hair configuration, simply because I am not mentally to have that much grey hair growing on my face at this point of my life. Vanity? Of course. I need my appearance to match how I see myself as much as possible in order to keep my wits about me. Vanity? Of course.
Apparently I got a little bit of sun during my hike this morning. I need to be better at keeping that sort of thing in check.
Caturday.
After my hike this morning I decided to take a nap. When I awoke from my nap, Truman was anticipating my arrival to the plane of reality. He wanted to know why his weekly Caturday post hadn’t been posted as of yet. Because of this delay, he decided to pose in an exceptionally cute way.
Undisciplined.
So for the past week I have been playing life “undisciplined”. We are at that point in the newish year where resolutions start to fall off and folks that meant well come the 1st of January have either solidified their approach to the new year or are back in their old habits. I am not a stranger to this concept.
Work has been weird, in that the management team is still figuring out the organizational goals and objectives for the year. This bit of uncertainty makes it difficult for me to formulate goals for my team members and to formulate my personal goals of what I’d like to achieve at work in 2024. I don’t want to write a bunch of generic goals that I know I can achieve. I want to stretch my professional abilities just a tad, and as I outlined in the latest one on one with my boss, I’d like to move up the management food chain a little bit, losing the “Associate” from my current title of “Associate Director”. She was in complete agreement.
So what does an undisciplined week look like for this 55 year old middle aged man? Well, apparently it includes referring to myself in the third person. Here’s a few things I didn’t do.
- I didn’t shave daily like I usually do. I used the excuse that I was growing my beard again to see what it looked like but in reality I was sleeping in and flying through my morning routine right before work, and by not shaving I had a few extra minutes to sleep in
- I didn’t really pay attention to healthy eating habits. I tried to keep my calories in check and I didn’t go all crazy with sugar and stuff, but I didn’t hit my weight goal this week
- I didn’t do any of my personal growth studies in that I didn’t read a book, I didn’t pay particularly close attention to my goals and todo lists, and I didn’t work on a couple of organizational courses I’ve been working through since the beginning of the year.
- I let my mind wander while online in that I didn’t create more than I consume when using the computer. Generally, I try to create/write/make things more than just watch videos or read bombastic comments from those that think they know it all. I did too much of the bombastic consumption. Sidebar, society is really screwed up and it’s just getting worse
- I didn’t work on my aviation goals and I didn’t fly an airplane this week
- I didn’t really dress the part for work like I usually do.
At the end of the day today I felt rather “adrift”. It was not a feeling I enjoyed and feeling adrift like this did not lead to any sort of relaxation. In fact, quite the opposite, while I was just sort of making my way through life on autopilot this week, in the back of my head I was thinking of all the things I didn’t do or I kept thinking of the things I could have been doing if I could muster up the energy.
In reality, I was having a hard time mustering up the energy.
So, now that I’ve taken a shower and shaved and put on clean clothes, I’ve gone back to my personal journal (which I didn’t update nearly as much this week) and re-read my Arete. For those unfamiliar, Arete is the concept of living your best life, living to your fullest potential, and living to the qualities that make for good character.
For the past week, while I thought I was living simply, I wasn’t living the “simple life” in the way that I so desire. And because I recognized this after taking a break from it all for a week, I feel energized and ready to jump back into the things I wanted to accomplish in 2024.
The resolutions or goals for the year haven’t fallen away. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Taking a break from trying feeling my brain get a little more chaotic with each passing this day the past week has made me realize the importance of sticking to my goals, doing things that I find fulfilling, and using my tendencies for structure to move myself forward.
Life is short. We should never assume we will see another sunrise. It’s up to us to be the calm in an increasingly chaotic world, but more importantly, it’s up to us to live our best life. There’s not enough time left to squander what we have.
I Mustache You A Question.
Earl asked me last night if I was growing a goatee. He noticed I hadn’t shaved in a few days and I responded to the negative, “no, I’m not growing a goatee”. Goatees are not my favorite thing. I’ve had them in the past but I don’t really like the look; I’d rather grow my beard out and have a longer goatee in the beard or something.
But I think I have mustache goals for the 2024 Storm Chasing season. I’ll focus on that.
I do not mind having a grey mustache but I don’t enjoy having a grey beard. The lip fur is a good balance.
Celebrate.
My husband is celebrating his birthday today. We are keeping it fairly simple with dinner and drinks tonight after work. We had cake and presents last night since Mike is out of town for work the rest of the week.
My husband is one amazing man.
iPad Doom.
I was reading a blog post today from one of the Apple websites I follow. The blog post was a round-up of pundits’ opinions on the state of Apple and its devices in 2023. Predictably, the pundits all gave the iPad lineup a failing score and cautioned that popularity of the platform is plummeting fast.
I guess the pundits have never noticed the point of sale device most likely used at their favorite coffee shop or restaurant, or the number of pilots using iPads as “Electronic Flight Bags”, or the number of students at their favorite haunt plunking away on an iPad of some sort.
I’m finding pundits tedious at best these days.
The iPad lineup was never designed to be a Mac replacement. There are plenty of things one can do with the iPad. Whole suits of popular software (ahem, Microsoft Office, Adobe Products, Final Cut Pro, etc) available for the iPad. Plus, since Apple strives to give you all the tools you need by default (Photos, Notes, Mail, Web Browsing, etc), it is certainly up to the task for the average consumer. Hell, all the tools I use as a cross-platform power user are available on my iPad Pro and today it’s on the rare occasion that I can’t accomplish something using my iPad. It’s a nifty device to bring along when I don’t want to lug a computer around. And if I want to play a game of Solitaire or something? It’s perfect. Plus, it’s the best platform for watching movies on the go, reading a book, and a whole lot of other consumption related activities.
Yes, I’m writing this blog entry on my iPad.
Instead of getting into it with some of the Apple pundits that basically get paid to share their opinion of Apple products and nothing more, I decided it was easier just to delete a few of these folks out of my RSS feeds.
I’m not the Apple fanboy I used to be, but I will not jump on the doom and gloom bandwagon of Apple when 1. they’re one of the richest companies in the history of human kind and 2. their products are ubiquitous in society. Is the iPad perfect? No. But it’s certainly not the garbage dump worthy of a failing grade a bunch of people who get paid to be outrageous make it out to be.
Use the tools that work best for you. End of story.
