offsite

At my tech jobs, we had offsites.  The team got away from the office to discuss and plan in a conference room somewhere else.  To simplify travel and/or reduce costs, sometimes we had the offsite onsite.  Yup.  And that’s what I had in preparation for the new year: an onsite-offsite.  More specifically, an on-my-sofa-offsite.  Three hours of planning my goals for this year.  At the work offsites, we usually had catered meals so that’s what I did too.  I got take-out (a big treat) of Pad Thai and vegan chocolate cheesecake.  I had a fabulous day. 

And here we are past the half-way point of January already.  Usually January and February are the toughest months to trudge through in Nova Scotia.  Sure it’s still winter in March and April and spring seems to never arrive on time, but at least it’s less cold by then and there is more daylight.  MAC sent me a photo of a coloUrful Japanese Camelia bud about to bloom in her garden last week in Atlanta and I countered with a pic of a snowy trail I’d just hiked.  But I doubt I’ll hear anyone complain about being here this winter—per yesterday’s update, The Oasis of Nova Scotia has only 29 known active cases of COVID-19. 

I have a photo on my fridge from one of the special New Year’s Day snowshoe adventures out west in the Cascade Mountains with a large group of friends.  We’re in a circle on the snow, all bundled up and raising our glasses in a toast.  One of my goals for 2020 was to find a group to hike with here (achieved) and to get into winter hiking again (achieved).  This year I didn’t think to plan it in advance but it worked out anyway: a sunny hike with friends on New Year’s Day.  When we got back to our cars, the parking lot was full—perhaps other people setting an intention with how they started the new year.

But all of the goals for the year and action items I wrote out during my offsite depend on one determination: I will stop procrastinating.  No, really.  What’s the alternative?  I’m not likely to run out of excuses to just remain on the sofa in 2021 so I can keep up with all the political and pandemic news.  It never stops.  So I keep going.  I try again.  I don’t give up.

And after 6.5 years, I’m going to try something a bit different here on BITNF: occasionally interspersing my short SLSR posts with longer pieces of creative non-fiction.  Because I won’t be taking a vacation trip during this second year of the pandemic, I’m going to test my memory and try some travel memoir.  I figure other people are missing vacation trips too and needing the occasional break from reading Crazytown News.  It’ll be a travel tangent. 

References and related links:

• MAC: mon amie Caroline.
• SLSR: simpler living semi-retirement.
• the first (post #129)