Saturday, January 26, 2013

Time is running out…


It’s approximately sixteen weeks to my birthday, at which time I will turn forty-five years old. Looking back on the two thousand three hundred and twenty-four weekends I have had I don’t know if I used them well. A small portion of them generated wonderful memories, but many of them were spent working for others, which is never a good way to spend a weekend.

If I take the median age of my parents (80 and 86) I could live to 83 (although my brother passed at 49) giving me approximately 1992 more weekends. I should take ten years of weekends off (-520) because we all know old people spend all weekend the restroom, leaving me with 1472 weekends to make some great memories. Will I squander these weekends the way I have wasted so many in the past?

What should my plan for using these weekends to their fullest potential? For the foreseeable future I will still be working, but maybe I can squeeze some meaning out of the weekends before I go to work. Should I do projects? Should I visit friends and laugh? Should make them all about family? Most likely a combination of all the above would make the most sense.

As I muddle through life, I will attempt to not sleep in on the weekends anymore but to get projects done, enjoy family time, and spend time among friends before going to work. A recent article on fighting depression specifically mentioned keeping social ties strong as opposed to isolating one’s self. Who knows I may just call you, reader, and say, “let’s do lunch or dinner.”

How many weekends do you have left? What’s your plan to spend them wisely?

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Approaching an End…


As I muddle through life it is inevitable that I, like everyone, must face endings in various and sundry things. For example the end of a relationship either via breakup, personal drift, or even death, could be the end of a movie, or the end of a career (or job placement change). No matter whom we are or where we are in life change will happen and with change comes endings.

For me, I see an approaching ending. For the past decade and a half I have been reading a wonderful series of books by Robert Jordan and I recently purchased the fourteenth and final book in that series. Even as I start this book, I know that the end is at hand. Robert Jordan has passed away, one way or another the series will be resolved, and I will no longer be able to peeking on the lives of these characters.
Will I miss them? Yes.
I have missed characters from a book series before.

Will I morn that loss? Perhaps.
In my own way I will grieve for the loss of those relationships. In no way am intending to say that losing a loved one is as mundane as finishing a series of books, similar but of differing intensities.

Will I feel achievement at having completed a series many have abandoned half way through or having read more than 13,000 pages in the process? No.
I do not feel accomplishment like others do; instead I will look back on the ‘journey’ or ‘adventure’ I enjoyed while reading this series.
I am not the same person I was a decade and a half ago.

Whatever becomes of Rand, Mat, Perrin, Elayne, Egwene, Nynaeve, Lan, or Siuan I will miss them as if they were absent friends.


Of course most endings are followed by new beginnings, whom shall I meet next and what adventure will they lead me on?