Greetings tonight from Procrastination City, where our motto is “why do something today that you can put off until tomorrow”. This is one place I could be King, but I don’t particularly like it here, so I’m going to pass. I’m really trying to get out, or at least spend less time here, but after years of conditioning, it might take a while. This was supposed to be written back in early January – I jotted some notes on January 24th, already two weeks late, and here I am, two weeks later… but this morning I committed to myself that I would get this out, finally, at long last. It’s also not that I don’t like to write these posts, in fact I love to, but without a deadline, my things do tend to slip out, and the further they go, the harder it is to get back and it becomes a little vicious circle. I do very well with deadlines, I don’t miss them, but often it is a mad rush at the end. I suspect I’m not alone, and really admire people that get things done early and always on time. I’m working on it, but do miss, in the other sense of the word, my days last fall when my only deadline was to get to my hotel before dark.
Now it’s not like I’ve been sitting around twiddling me thumbs, I’ve been quite busy doing all the things I have to do, like bills, and sorting through boxes to finally finish my move, and paperwork, and finding a steady source of income. And there are the things I want to do, like learn more about public speaking, and write some practice speeches, and compile a little book I’m putting together. There are a lot of irons in the fire right now, and keeping them in order has been a challenge. Stress has unfortunately reentered my life, but I just have to practice what I preach, and that is… put yourself in what you think is a good position and let things work out as they may. Trying to control tomorrow is often a futile exercise, for the outcome is never exactly the way you thought it would be, even if you wasted all that time and energy trying to figure out the dozens of possible scenarios and outcomes. I trust things will work out well, and last week when I consciously let go of control, things started happening, as they should, and better than expected.
The one thing that has been consistent and has kept me calm and centered are my walks, every day without exception, no procrastination here. I’ve said this before, but my walks have nothing to do with physical exercise. They are my meditations, my calm moments, my present moments. It’s the one part of my day that I can put everything aside and just focus on my walk, my place in life, listen to my music and breathe the nice fresh air. When I catch my mind going back to the recruiters, and the applications, I just go back to my walk, take a few conscious and deep breaths and snap back to that moment, which will never be back again, so why waste it with unnecessary worry or chatter.
About three weeks ago, I started picking up my walking pace in preparation for next week’s Austin Marathon. My first was two years ago, repeated it last year and was really looking forward to a three-peat. Unfortunately, it’s not happening this year. Remember listening to your body? Well my left hip was screaming at me not to do it and though I pushed through it and had a (very painful) week of about fifty 14-minute miles. I finally listened and decided to sit it out this year. I’ve got way too many walks ahead to jeopardize over one little marathon, and even though I walk the courses, it just doesn’t seem worth it this time. Instead I’ll watch my son Thomas tear up his body!
And speaking of walking… remember that wonderful group of then strangers who were so kind and welcomed me so warmly to Strawberry Fields? They were all part of EverWalk Nation, and I am happy to say that I have not only joined EverWalk, but as of this morning, I am officially the EverWalk Ambassador for Zilker Park, Austin, TX. It’s a super cool group of people with perhaps only one thing in common, and that is their love of walking. The then strangers have become friends, and I’m honored to be an Ambassador – never been an ambassador of anything, let alone king, but hopefully will get a good group going in Austin with my co-ambassador Beth, who also has become my friend. Kinda cool, and something I never would have done a handful of years ago, but things change, don’t they? Check it out, join if you like, it costs nothing and there is nothing but upside.
And today I had a great walk, alone for most of it, about eight miles around the lake. Had a nice phone chat with my mom, now 92 and in Mexico City, doing exceptionally well. Then I called her older brother, my uncle, who will turn 95 later this year, great talk, and lastly, her younger brother, in his mid-eighties. So nice to talk to all three, all well, and to whom I attribute my love of writing. All three were quite prolific writers, and much better than I’ll ever be, but I used to love reading what they wrote. My mom wrote dozens of stories, about her mom, my brother, all kinds of things, and then embarked on a project to write the history of the British in Mexico in a series of “chapters” which she published as booklets, but together probably still stand as the best compilation of the history of the British “invasion” of Mexico in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her older brother wrote many papers, having been a geology professor at the Colorado School of Mines for over 50 years. And the younger brother, well that’s what he did. He was a young reporter for the AP in places like the Congo, Uzbekistan, Moscow and Vietnam. Later he was the New York Times reporter in Jerusalem, early 1970’s – pretty heady times. On his return to NY, he was the Editor of Foreign Affairs and then went on to write several books, real books. I thought about them all as I continued my walk. I suppose I inherited a gene or two from all three of them, for which I’m grateful, and thanked them (in my mind) for their influence.
And then, one of those unexpected and lovely encounters that only the Universe knows why they happen. I certainly don’t, but restate the fact that I don’t believe in coincidences. Things always happen for a reason. Most reasons are of course obvious and understood, but when they start getting unclear or often called weird, most people call them coincidences. I just think the reasons are beyond our intellectual grasp.
I was walking back towards my little apartment, and came up on a woman I had seen before, and noticed before, for she carries a little “picker upper” for lack a better word, a cane-like thing with tongs on the end with which she picks up little pieces of paper and garbage that the inconsiderate leave behind. And she puts them in the bag she carries and throws them away properly when she’s done walking. Today I walked by her, as I had before without saying anything, but this time I looked over and said “thank you for what you’re doing” and she looked up, perhaps a bit surprised, but her smile said everything.
So I slowed down, and we walked. And we talked. Dolly is a retired nurse, widowed, living in Austin, and one of the kindest, nicest people you could ever imagine. She’s real. And we told each other some of our stories. She told me about her trip in an RV around the country after her husband passed, and just this morning I spoke with Toria, my new EverWalk friend who is still driving around the country, and my friend of many years Suz, who’s embarking on her RV trip next year. OK, weird. Then it turns out she exercised polo ponies at Mokuleia on Oahu’s north shore, where I’ve been several times in my own polo days and have dear friends, and we talked more about horses, and life, and suffering and growth, in that order.
Along the way she introduced me to Tom. I have seen Tom several times before, though I certainly didn’t know his name was Tom. All I know is that he has no place to go, no home. I can say no more, for I don’t know any more. I don’t know if it’s a drug issue, a mental illness, or any of the things that before yesterday, I just assumed had to be going on in his life. I am wrong to have jumped to an immediate conclusion, as most of us do. But he is someone’s son, maybe someone’s brother or father, and he is human, just like me, like us. I asked him how he was doing after shaking his hand, and he looked at me with the kindest deep blue eyes, and said “just living day to day”. He was chewing on a mint that Dolly had given him earlier, and you could tell he was really enjoying it, a mint, a simple mint. I will never look at a person who is destitute in the same way as I had prior to about 7:00 PM, Feb 7.
And after about an hour, Dolly and I parted ways, and I thanked her again, for a very different reason.
If you know the answers, let me know - I promise to listen. In the meantime, while I work on my procrastination, I’m hoping to get back on a cadence and finish this all up properly. And to you I say, don’t procrastinate, take yourselves a nice little walk, and thank someone along the way, either in person or virtually. And don’t forget to smile - it can change a life.