Building Frustration

The past five days, I have sat down to write a blog post.  I have not gotten anywhere with it.  It's awful.  I still haven't finished it.  I have about a paragraph written.  In my mind, I have about five or six paragraphs worth of ideas.  I basically I had all day off yesterday (I was finished with work at 10:00 in the morning), and wrote nothing.  I tried.  I got distracted.  And the sad thing is, I think I have written about this before.  Am I going to go through the archives to check?  Nope.  

One problem with living in a one bedroom apartment, is that there is nowhere to isolate yourself when you need to do something (like write a blog post).  There are distractions EVERYWHERE.  And by everywhere, I mean right in front of me.  It's the television.  And here's the thing, there is jack shit on television at 10:00 in the morning.  But still, I found myself turning it on trying to find something to watch.  You know what I should have done?  I should have turned it off.  And then taken the batteries out of the remote.  And then unplugged the television.  

One nice thing to have is the mobile app for Blogger.  I can write on my phone.  This helps to make progress after I drive to work.  I usually have fifteen to twenty minutes depending on traffic before work so I can take some time to write down some thoughts and ideas.  I just don't because I forget about it sometimes.  I do other things like check Twitter and read articles.  Who wants to write when you have a full day's worth of work to do?  I just want to spend the last few minutes of my morning relaxing and listening to music or podcasts.  

Another problem I have found is that I look at this goal I set for myself this year.  I thought that a lofty goal would help me be more active with my writing, but it has turned into a mental block.  I look at where I'm at right now (forty five posts) and when I realize we are coming up on August, I just get flustered.  I should have thirty more posts than I do.  I justify my lack of writing on working and not having any energy after work, but that's not good enough.  It's not like I work twelve hour shifts or anything like that.  


45/120

Time Away

We took our vacation.  It was fantastic.  It was relaxing.  It was just the right amount of time.  Maybe another day would have been good, but three days of not being home was very nice.  The only downside was that my wife had a cold while we were up there.  Weird right?  Summer colds are just...odd.

The weather was outstanding.  I was a bit worried about the weather because most of what we wanted to do was outside.  And what do you do when it rains outside?  You find stuff to do inside.  Usually you look to going to malls and stores, which is not as cool when you live in a metro area and have access to the stores.  We did not do any shopping.  We did spend quite a bit of time outside.  Practically all day on the 5th was spent outdoors, minus drive time.  We went up to a couple of state parks that were half an hour or so north of Duluth.  The drive reminded me so much of driving in the U.P.  We were able to step foot in Lake Superior.  It's cold on the western end just it is on the eastern end.  Proof of being in the lake:

I went up to my ankles.  That was enough.  Like I said, it was cold.  We had a picnic and enjoyed the scenery.  There weren't any black flies or mosquitoes driving us crazy.  Just a few flies here and there.  It was busy because it was a weekend and a holiday weekend at that.   

We spent some time with friends from high school/college.  For all the complaining I do about social media, the only way we were able to see them was because we are all Facebook friends.  It was great to see them, and they were great resources for things to do.  They told us which restaurant to stop at and get pie (The Rustic Inn) on our way up the shore.  And....AND...they hooked us up with a great view for the fireworks.  On top of a building!  Away from the people and congestion. 

I only took a handful of pictures of the fireworks because I wanted to actually watch them with my eyes and not through the screen of my phone. 
I'm sure that if we had spent one more day up there, we would have been able to find some more stuff to do.  But then again, Duluth isn't huge, so two days without having concrete plans was just enough.  We did agree though that if we were to do another trip like this, it would be on a weekend that was not a holiday weekend.  Just dealing with extra traffic on the roads was all we needed to know that we didn't want to do it again.  And we thought about that after we started making plans, but we stuck with it.  And I'm happy we did.  Like I said, it was nice and relaxing and it was a new adventure. 

44/120

Making Traditions

I don't know exactly when it started, probably in 2004 or 2005, but every year I find myself watching the movie 'Gettysburg' some time between July 1st and 3rd, the days that the battle took place.  Is it hokey?  Yes.  Not as hokey as if I were watching it on three separate days to coincide with the actions of the battle.  That would be down right troubling.  I prefer to watch it all in one sitting.  One, four hour long, take an intermission break, have both breakfast and lunch during the viewing, sitting.  It's my own little nod to a part of history that I have always found interesting and the movie is very enjoyable.

While the movie watching might not be what most people would call a 'tradition' in the normal sense of the word, I am going to include it.  Normally, when you think of a tradition, you think of eating a holiday meal at one specific relative's house, or going camping at the same place every year with the same group of people.  I don't necessarily think that traditions have to occur at the same time year in and year out.  I know that when I think of 'traditions' that families have, they tend to revolve around holidays.  Which is the norm, is it not?  Whether it is summer holidays or winter holidays, I'm sure every family has at least one tradition that they stick to each year.

When you think of a tradition, you do not normally think of sitting down and watching a movie the same time each year.  And why not?  Because normally, a tradition is something you do with other people.  Whether it is family or friends, a tradition is something you can always mark on a calendar and call people a month ahead of time to make sure that the plans are still on.  When I was growing up, each summer we went camping with our longtime family friends.  I do not remember it always being the same time every year, but I just remember going each year.  That is the nice thing about a tradition that doesn't revolve around a holiday.  If you take a summer camping trip with friends, it doesn't have to be the same weekend every year, it can just take place in the summer.  Or if you go on a ski trip each winter, it doesn't have to be the second weekend in January every year.

But sitting down and watching a movie around the same time each year can be a personal tradition.  For people like me who enjoy both history and movies, taking the time to watch a movie the same day(s) as the historical event took place, that's a pinnacle of nerdiness.  If you want to watch 'Half Baked' on April 20th each year, go nuts.  Watch 'The Longest Day' each June 6th if that tickles your fancy.  More recently, I have noticed that television channels have been doing holiday marathons of movie series.  AMC did a 'Jaws' marathon leading up to the 4th of July weekend.  I have seen channels like TNT, Spike, and TBS all show movies like the 'Lord of the Ring' trilogy, the 'Star Wars' prequals and original trilogy.

So there are different kinds of traditions that you can now start to call your own.  Traditions that don't involve the stress of planning out entire weekends or weeks.  Traditions that are cost saving too.  And yes, these types of traditions are a bit anti-social.  But if you are going to just sit down and watch a few movies, that isn't going to take up an entire week....unless you want it to.  

43/120