Time to start planning my next trip to Europe! :D
Read about the EU's proposed smoking ban.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
Monthly update?
I'm not so good about posting to this blog any more, am I? Ah well, here goes nothin' again, I suppose.
I spent a good chunk of this past weekend backpacking in a local state park. This was due in part to the fact that I had a great deal of reading on which to catch up, but even moreso due to the fact that I needed a lot of uninterrupted thinking time. I had a few relationships that required mulling over so that I could put them to bed, or not, as appropriate. One was a pretty easy call, and I had more-or-less already made up my mind about it. Another, I spent a great deal of time thinking about, and finally decided that I could, with an open mind, offer this person one final opportunity to be my friend. Upon my return however, and waking up in the middle of this night, I gave the matter more thought, and decided that that would not be the best course of action. It would leave me open to not only further rejection, but also the possibility of myself becoming nasty or defensive, should he aim for certain nerves. So, despite whatever benefits I might be passing up by allowing this friendship to die, I think it is best to leave this person behind. Naturally I will want for closure, but...let's just say it won't be the first time.
Which brought me to pondering my own tendencies. I've been reading a book on Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET), and actually find very interesting the fact that it essentially takes the core beliefs of several Eastern religions/belief systems, and rolls them neatly into a set of thought patterns and practices that are fairly accessible to the Western mind. Will it help me with the matters at hand? Perhaps, assuming I apply it diligently. Considering these are not new concepts to me, I do have to wonder how much value they will have. At the same time, I do find that most humans, myself included, tend to benefit from re-visiting the same material more than once over the course of their lives. That is, what you take away from a certain teaching at an earlier stage of life may vary widely from what you can take from that very same teaching a few years later. So I am perusing this book in a leisurely fashion (considering I have quite a bit of required reading to do for school that pre-empts it), and trying to see what will come of it.
Essentially, I seek to exorcise a few old demons. People from my past (most of them more distant, temporally, than he with whom I considered reconciling) who, for one reason or another, left my life without a proper goodbye, and thus deprived me of closure. Whether they were lovers or just friends does not seem to matter; only that they left my sphere of influence without so much as a backward glance. Perhaps I am wrong about this; perhaps they, too, think of me, and wish they could rekindle our friendship. Those few whom I have seen fit to contact, however, even if they are welcoming at that first re-connection, do not seem to have it in them to maintain an open line of communication, even half-heartedly. I will be the first to admit that I gravitate primarily toward what I refer to as "low-maintenance friendships." That is, friends who only require occasional (and by occasional I mean as little as once or twice per year) contact to continue considering themselves my friends. This is especially true of my far-flung friends, since actually physically seeing them is generally out of the question. As much as I enjoy visiting friends while traveling, I also hate to put anyone out, and I realize most everyone has "a life" that would easily supercede my visit in importance. But I digress...
Since most of these folks with whom I have previously sought closure do not seem likely to become even low-maintenance friends, I feel I must resume my quest to put a period on the end of our friendships. I don't know if the "new" tool of RET will help me find closure, or (as seems more likely), help me relinquish my need for closure with these people, but I am hopeful.
Now, for the part of this y'all actually want to read about...
I took off Friday afternoon and hiked in to my first camp site with plenty of time before dark to make camp, eat, etc. I didn't bring any stove or food that required cooking on this trip, as it was to be so short, and I really didn't see any reason to add that excess weight to my pack. Slept pretty well there, except for a couple of times during the night when the local coyote population decided to begin yipping away fairly close by. Saturday I hiked the ten miles to my next campsite, and slept pretty well there, with the exception of a couple of hooters...er, owls...that were wont to disturb my slumber. I also had occasion to refill my water supply at that campsite, and was dreading the sulfurous malodor of Floridian well water. Much to my delight, however, my filter did a very good job of removing most of the flavor from the stuff, so my seven-mile hike out on Sunday was not as unpleasant as it could have been. Interestingly, I did not encounter a single human as I walked the hiking trails or while I was in the camps, despite the fact that the ranger with whom I made my reservations made it sound as though they were almost completely full all weekend. I ran across a few people when on the roads open to bike traffic, though, and flushed out more deer, pigs, quail, raccoons and armadillos than I can count. Overall, I traversed a little over 20 miles in just under two days. My knees are complaining to me about it as I type, although I suspect they are more upset about the 40-pound load I carried than the walking itself. Hopefully they will get over it in a day or two, and I can resume my boring old habit of working out at the gym.
I spent a good chunk of this past weekend backpacking in a local state park. This was due in part to the fact that I had a great deal of reading on which to catch up, but even moreso due to the fact that I needed a lot of uninterrupted thinking time. I had a few relationships that required mulling over so that I could put them to bed, or not, as appropriate. One was a pretty easy call, and I had more-or-less already made up my mind about it. Another, I spent a great deal of time thinking about, and finally decided that I could, with an open mind, offer this person one final opportunity to be my friend. Upon my return however, and waking up in the middle of this night, I gave the matter more thought, and decided that that would not be the best course of action. It would leave me open to not only further rejection, but also the possibility of myself becoming nasty or defensive, should he aim for certain nerves. So, despite whatever benefits I might be passing up by allowing this friendship to die, I think it is best to leave this person behind. Naturally I will want for closure, but...let's just say it won't be the first time.
Which brought me to pondering my own tendencies. I've been reading a book on Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET), and actually find very interesting the fact that it essentially takes the core beliefs of several Eastern religions/belief systems, and rolls them neatly into a set of thought patterns and practices that are fairly accessible to the Western mind. Will it help me with the matters at hand? Perhaps, assuming I apply it diligently. Considering these are not new concepts to me, I do have to wonder how much value they will have. At the same time, I do find that most humans, myself included, tend to benefit from re-visiting the same material more than once over the course of their lives. That is, what you take away from a certain teaching at an earlier stage of life may vary widely from what you can take from that very same teaching a few years later. So I am perusing this book in a leisurely fashion (considering I have quite a bit of required reading to do for school that pre-empts it), and trying to see what will come of it.
Essentially, I seek to exorcise a few old demons. People from my past (most of them more distant, temporally, than he with whom I considered reconciling) who, for one reason or another, left my life without a proper goodbye, and thus deprived me of closure. Whether they were lovers or just friends does not seem to matter; only that they left my sphere of influence without so much as a backward glance. Perhaps I am wrong about this; perhaps they, too, think of me, and wish they could rekindle our friendship. Those few whom I have seen fit to contact, however, even if they are welcoming at that first re-connection, do not seem to have it in them to maintain an open line of communication, even half-heartedly. I will be the first to admit that I gravitate primarily toward what I refer to as "low-maintenance friendships." That is, friends who only require occasional (and by occasional I mean as little as once or twice per year) contact to continue considering themselves my friends. This is especially true of my far-flung friends, since actually physically seeing them is generally out of the question. As much as I enjoy visiting friends while traveling, I also hate to put anyone out, and I realize most everyone has "a life" that would easily supercede my visit in importance. But I digress...
Since most of these folks with whom I have previously sought closure do not seem likely to become even low-maintenance friends, I feel I must resume my quest to put a period on the end of our friendships. I don't know if the "new" tool of RET will help me find closure, or (as seems more likely), help me relinquish my need for closure with these people, but I am hopeful.
Now, for the part of this y'all actually want to read about...
I took off Friday afternoon and hiked in to my first camp site with plenty of time before dark to make camp, eat, etc. I didn't bring any stove or food that required cooking on this trip, as it was to be so short, and I really didn't see any reason to add that excess weight to my pack. Slept pretty well there, except for a couple of times during the night when the local coyote population decided to begin yipping away fairly close by. Saturday I hiked the ten miles to my next campsite, and slept pretty well there, with the exception of a couple of hooters...er, owls...that were wont to disturb my slumber. I also had occasion to refill my water supply at that campsite, and was dreading the sulfurous malodor of Floridian well water. Much to my delight, however, my filter did a very good job of removing most of the flavor from the stuff, so my seven-mile hike out on Sunday was not as unpleasant as it could have been. Interestingly, I did not encounter a single human as I walked the hiking trails or while I was in the camps, despite the fact that the ranger with whom I made my reservations made it sound as though they were almost completely full all weekend. I ran across a few people when on the roads open to bike traffic, though, and flushed out more deer, pigs, quail, raccoons and armadillos than I can count. Overall, I traversed a little over 20 miles in just under two days. My knees are complaining to me about it as I type, although I suspect they are more upset about the 40-pound load I carried than the walking itself. Hopefully they will get over it in a day or two, and I can resume my boring old habit of working out at the gym.
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