October, 2006

Inappropriate

Posted by Evan at 8:07 am

A couple of weekends ago Kristen and I decided to go down to Brookville Lake. It’s only 25 or so minutes from our house and we were looking for something out of the ordinary to do so that’s what we did. As we drove through the country on our way to the lake I noticed all of the fall leaves and again remembered how much I love this time of year, the golden fields, the colored leaves. This is a wonderful time to live in Indiana.

As we passed the front entrance and made our drive down to the beach I couldn’t help but notice the lack of other cars. That’s when it hit me, it was mid-october and we were heading to the beach. It hadn’t occurred to me that our plans were so out of line with the season but even after it did I didn’t care, it was far too cool to swim but that wasn’t our plan anyway. We wanted to get away.

As we made our way through the large trees down the curved roadway the display of colors was amazing. I could easily remember what this same scenery looked like during the summer and the scene that day far surpassed the beauty of my memory. When we finally made it all the way to the beach there were only 2 cars in what would be a filled lot during the summer. We parked, in the front row on top of a large hill that flowed down to the water’s edge. It was beautiful. It was then that I realized that even though we couldn’t get into the water this was the most beautiful time of year to come to the beach. There were people on the lake in their boats, there was a group of young kids playing in the large grassy lot next to the beach and there were amazingly beautiful tree-covered hills in the distance no matter which direction I looked.

The water was still warm enough that it wasn’t too cool to put our feet into so we walked down the water’s edge. Pepper’s not a big fan of water so she wasn’t as excited as we were to be that close to the water. I had brought my camera with me and I was snapping pictures as quickly as I could to try and capture the moment when John Mayer’s 3×5 came to mind “Today I finally overcame trying to fit the world inside a picture frame”. Sadly I haven’t overcome that desire.

The whole experience got me thinking, how many other wonderful opportunities do we miss out on because we aren’t willing to do things that are outside of the box? Maybe ice cream tastes even better in the winter? I can’t help but think the person who decided to try using snow skis on the water might agree.

Life as it is now

Posted by Evan at 11:36 am

Never do I remember having such a peaceful period in my life. There are very few stresses right now and things seem to generally be going very well. As Kristen and I settle into our house (it’s taking a little longer than we expected) a vision of the future becomes a little clearer; a vision of putting time into working on our home and in the yard. There’s something very soothing about doing work on your home, a sense of preserving something fortifying it to last many more years than it would have otherwise. I guess I’m getting older.

I’ve got several projects that I work on in my free time and I genuinely enjoy working on them. I’ve got a couple of possible volunteer projects lined up as well that could be starting soon. I find it very nurturing to my skills as a website developer to have several projects going on at once so I have opportunities to try new ideas and techniques. All the while I’m making sure not to get too busy for I know what happens when I take on too much and I don’t want to go there. It seems a little selfish but completely necessary.

Kristen is loving her new teaching job at Centerville Junior High and she’s creating a very strong bond with the other teachers there. She can truly imagine being their for the rest of her teaching career and I have to say that would be great. Having our own home has made my desire to move from this area much weaker, almost to the point where I can imagine living here forever.

There’s been a somewhat dramatic shift in my daily time schedule that’s sort of left me a little off balance. Every morning at 5:45 I get up and go to the gym with Jamie. Even when we were going in the mornings before we didn’t get there until 7:30 which for some reason was harder to do than getting there at 6:00. Now we get there by 6:00 and stay until around 7:00 or so. We get much more done than we ever did before and we’re both enjoy it too. There’s something much more enjoyable about driving to the new gym (which is in Centerville) in a small town rather than driving to an industrial part of Richmond. It has more of an effect on your motivation than I ever realized. As a result of getting up so much earlier every day I’ve been going to bed earlier and have even taken on a different work schedule. It’s a pretty dramatic change and a welcome one.

I’ve noticed a significant change in myself lately that I’ve put off mentioning until I was pretty sure that it wasn’t just a phase. I’ve noticed that my thoughts on food and exercise have completely changed. For a long time I knew that if one is to get in shape they need to view food as nothing more than fuel for their body but it was always more than that. Lately I’ve been pretty impressed with my ability to limit how much I’m eating as well as the types of foods I’m eating.

I’ll still eat the things that I enjoy but there’s no sense of needing those things any more. I’m curious how long this new thought process (in combination with my rigorous workout routine) will take to yield some noticeable results, but the truth is I don’t really care. There’s something about treating your body like the machine it truly is rather than an organic body-thing that craves certain foods that is very satisfying. I think this might actually be a permanent change and I would welcome that. But enough on that.

Yes, life is great. Sure there’s always a desire for more; more money, more time, more energy but those things should have no influence on happiness. I recently had the opportunity to give my testimony at a church picnic and realized in preparation for that how wonderful things truly are now. I don’t intend to take that for granted.