Nostalgia walk

One of the things I intended to do this semester to to resume walking in places I’ve neglected the last few years.  Once the semester got under way, that didn’t happen–but today I decided to head out into an area I haven’t been to in several years, partly because to even get out to that area is now a serious walk on it’s own, because of the ways they’ve been shutting down access to the land and because of the development:

Living in the moment. Whatever that means.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. —Buddha

This is often-seen advice and generally considered to be wisdom.  And I agree there is something to it, in the sense at least that one can fritter one’s life away dreaming of past or future, and that seems a waste.  But it’s one of those half-truths that are only complete when put together with their opposites.  Like “out of sight, out of mind” and “absence makes the heart grow fonder.”  In this case we’d need at least two other aphorisms, one about the blessing of memory, and one along the lines of “anticipation is half the fun” to express a complete truth.

But right now I want to talk about the effect of pre-retirement (and contemplating packing and moving).  

Retirement markers

Even though I’m not really done yet–in fact, one of the biggest things of ending any semester has yet to be done, posting grades–people have been hosting events for our* retirement.  Yesterday, a party, nothing even mildly official, just a couple of colleagues who are also friends who wanted to help us celebrate; today the department event**.  Each was perfect in its own way.  Well, the party was perfect–the department event was about as nice as it could have been, I’m not sure such events can be quite perfect for socially uncomfortable people like me.  Nice things were said, toasts were made (with sparkling water,  you can’t buy alcohol with dept. funds, we are squeaky clean about such things), gifts were given.

Not-blogging

I really only blogged regularly for a couple of years, and since then have posted only a few times a year.  What has amazed me is that my stats have not dropped to zero in all the years that I have hardly posted at all.  What has happened instead is there is a regular, very small trickle of visitors.  What amazes me more–and the two facts are related–is the variety of countries represented among those who do find their way to my site.  

Annual blog resumption

I was actually going to just post photos on FB, but FB has apparently revised how one does that, and I didn’t understand the old way all that well, and this time once I got into the process  they just abandoned me there–no way forward, no way back, that I could figure out.  So I closed the page, and here I am.

I got into reading my old blog posts a few weeks back, and that convinced me I want to continue blogging–it was a nice way to reminisce.  I’ve been mulling over different things I could write about–blogging, for instance, or the in-between state of being almost-retired, and maybe soon I will do one of those.  But for now, I just want to post my pics and talk about them.

iPhone walk test photos

I just got an iPhone, my first, so of course took it on my walk yesterday.  Tried out the camera, to see how it does, and it seems not too bad.  

Lazy post for a lazy day

So I’ve been up here a week now, and my energy level seems to correlate remarkably well with the weather. Which makes today a moderately lazy day–it’s cloudy, but not rainy, though it was misting heavily earlier this morning.

Not all my days have been lazy, and I have the evidence to prove it.