Month: September 2016

Thoughts on an Early Morning.

/ Jeff Crow / 1 Comment

It’s early for me; as I sit to write this the sun has yet to peek over the hills.  The streets are still quiet, and the cafe that I’m sitting at is still empty.  I’m sure it won’t last.

I am not an early riser.  My ideal day is to wake up at 9, read some articles and browse the internet, before finally getting up, eating breakfast, and finally getting dressed.  A successful day off is not getting dressed before noon.  That is decidedly not this morning.

It’s fun to see people in their usual routine: the guy on a motorcycle that just pulled up, greeted the barista by name, laid perfect change on the counter, and picked up his already made drink; the man in a suit on the phone as he walked by, firing questions to his assistant; the woman out for a run with her dog.  We all have our rituals and routines.  We all have a way we want to see our day go, a way to help us move the day forward.

How do we continue to move our lives forward though?  The time keeps passing, but are we moving it?  Are we pushing the day, or is it pushing us?  In a sea of Yesterdays and Tomorrows, are we adrift on the raft of Today?

We spend so much of our time exerting control on the everyday nuances of our lives: there is an app to control the temperature and lighting of your home, we can find exactly the show we want to watch when we want to watch it, we can have our coffee in incredibly complex and ridiculous ways.  We spend so much time trying to control the mundane, perhaps because we have now feel we have so little control in every other way.

I have felt my days getting away from me.  I have felt the moments and the time getting a little too far in front, always keeping me off-balance.  It’s time to slow down, to make sure I have a solid footing.  To take control of my Today, to get the Tomorrow I want.

Until next time…

Exhaustion

/ Jeff Crow / Leave a comment

I would love to be able to say that my break has been due to work on other projects or because of trips to exciting places.  Instead, it is because I am exhausted.

We went on a great vacation to Portland (which I talked about here), and then almost as soon as we got back from that we moved into our own place.  For the last couple of years, while my wife was going to grad school, we have lived with both her parents and then mine. So now we are finally moved in, but that means we have spent weeks going through boxes, finding space for things, eliminating things, and discovering enough spiders to make our own horror movie.

Roughly a week after moving in, my wife and I went to Washington D.C.  It was incredible and amazing and almost indescribable.  It was also a whirlwind; with us being gone for less than 36 hours, and squeezing in a tour of the Capital City, an Oriols game, and some sightseeing.  It was an adventure and a half, but it also left us both wiped.  Once we got back from that it was more moving, more work, and plenty of late nights with early mornings.

All of this is not to say that my life is busier or more exhausting or harder.  My life is great.  But the last few weeks has been busier, more exhausting, and harder, than it has been in a while.  I haven’t been writing.  I haven’t been doing much more than surviving.  I’m done with that.  I am ready to start living again.

So, here’s to the hope for a better tomorrow.  Here’s to trying again.  A thousand starts is still a start.

Until next week…