The Danger of Free Time

After thirty years in publishing, I stopped working about eighteen months ago. The first fifteen months were great. There were Thanksgiving and Christmas, my husband had a knee replacement, we traveled to England for the first time, we spent the summer in Colorado, made a couple of random jaunts to Florida, and one quick road trip to Las Vegas, then there were Thanksgiving and Christmas again. People asked me if I missed working, and I could honestly say I hadn’t had time to think about it. I loved being able to say yes when someone asked me to do something. I actually made and took casseroles to people who were sick or had a baby. I exercised more than once a quarter. It has been great.

Then, this winter, I found myself with nothing to do. There were no crises that needed my attention. We had no major trips planned. My life was fairly under control. For the first time in decades, I was bored. I knew I didn’t want to go back to work. I was bored, not crazy. But, I also knew it was time to do something.

We spent a few weeks in Colorado in February and decided to ski again. It had been more than twenty-seven years since I was last on skis. When I finally got off the mountain, I wrote a long Facebook post about my skiing exploits. It got a great response. People laughed, liked it, and commented. Several friends asked me why I didn’t blog. I no longer had a good answer.

I asked my computer guy, Brian Coulam (I am Geek), if he could help me set up a blog and suddenly, I had all the makings of a blog. All I had to do was actually write it. To learn how to use the programming, I uploaded several posts from our trip to England. Working on my small Macbook was tedious, especially to source the photos from the tiny thumbnails, but I began to get the hang of it, and soon I was done. Then a computer glitch deleted everything. A week’s worth of work gone in an instant. I laughed (and laughed and laughed, a slightly hysterical kind of laughter), and thought maybe this was not a great idea.

Evans suggested I get a monitor and not try to use my tiny computer screen. With the purchase of a giant, 32″ monitor, not to mention the investment of having the website built, I became a blogger. I reposted all the posts and pictures that were lost, added the popular ski story, and hit publish.

I am calling it Tripping the Awkward Fantastic. I hope to write about travel, and what better reason to travel than that I have to write about it. I believe this season of life is fantastic and filled with adventures and new experiences. And, truthfully, it is the awkward, unplanned, unexpected things that make life the most fun.

I hope you will join me in this new venture. Please comment and share and tell your friends. I will try to be entertaining and honest, and will almost certainly be awkward. But, that is what makes it fantastic.