Reevaluation

I was thinking today about what it means to live an authentic life. By that I mean: to be living as an aware being, choosing a path, and not just blindly repeating the same motions day after day. Because that's what I've been doing the last few months: get up, eat breakfast, work at the computer for four hours, go work out, work four more hours, tend the garden, eat dinner, watch a film, read a book, sleep.

Repeat x120 days, modulo random variations.

This is not what I want my life to be. What I want more of:

• Real interaction with people in my life, instead of screen time (computers and television)
• To stop doing leisure time activities that I really don't like
• More stop & quiet

For the first one, I want to push the keyboard away, and figure out how to fill the spare time with my people.  Play backgammon with Laura, hike an evening trail, help mom haul some compost.  This sitting in front of screens thing has got to stop.  Really, it just has to.  Facebook is stupid, and a $5 comcast movie is a waste of both money as well as time.  I used to read a book a day, and I remember thinking and being challenged.  Now, I feel like a lemming, waiting for the next round of entertainment.

For the second, this is harder.  It means some real introspection.  You know what?  I really don't like the mountain rescue stuff.  They consume my weekends and my weekdays, and honestly, there were only four callouts last year and I was unavailable for all of them.  The guys in that group do it mostly to get away from their families for a night or a day.  That's not the kind of dynamic I want to be a part of.  I appreciate their efforts, but really, it's not fulfulling, and it's wasting my time.  If I'm going to volunteer my time for a cause, I want it to feel right.  I don't want to be a person who does things to get away from his life -- I want to do things to be a part of them.

For the last, it's the hardest of all.  I'm so sick of supermarkets playing pop songs in the background, and radios in the car.  Why must we always have noise?  And why must we always be moving or doing?  The best times of the last month that I can remember involve.. nothing that would make any headline.  I remember Finn sitting beside me as I crouched by a garden bed, shivering as he does when the ground is cold and his foot pads get wet.  I remember the warmth of Laura's skin as we stood together, watching the sun set in the forest.  I remember waking up and then lying still, listening to the frogs croaking in the stream bed outside.

Well, tomorrow is the start of a new day.  Let's see how it goes.