Not Much of an Excuse, Really…
It’s amazing to me that I am averaging only one or two entries a week. It’s not that I have nothing to write about, but it’s that I’ve been spending more time away from the computer. Those moments when I am symbiotically attached to my electronic soulmate, I’m catching up on things either with a higher priority or that are time-sensitive. Paying bills, for instance. Gathering evidence for a civil lawsuit. Preparing for the inevitable tax season. Camping on Monster, HotJobs, or Brassring. More important than writing about nonsense or researching some esoteric philosophy expounded by some ancient civilization. Ideas come to me in hordes. Well, maybe not hordes, but at least a few times each day, I think to myself that whatever fleeting topic may have occured to me at that particular moment is worthy of a blog.
So what have I been up to? What’s been more of a priority than spending quality time with the computer? I’m frequently busy with notary signings, I find myself doing more puttering around the house, fixing this or that or cleaning up something, and I’ve geocached more in the last month than ever (having just found my 250th cache yesterday). Geocaching has been a great excuse to get outside and get off my ášš. As I tell Kim, it’s my gym — at least on those days when I’m hiking strenuously through a national forest or navigating a swollen river. I enjoy it so much that I found my thoughts wandering recently as to whether or not my physical prowess and stamina when I’m in my sixties and retired will affect my caching abilities!
Geocaching also includes a blogging element. Each cache I successfully find is a story in and of itself. Rather than taking the easy shortcut that so many other geovisitors take by writing something as quick and easy as “TNLNSL” (which means “took nothing, left nothing and signed log”), I tend to be much more verbose, highlighting some interesting aspect of the journey. Some I’ve even had to cut into separate logs because the length limit is just over 4,000 characters and my georamblings excceded the limit!
Of course, all this impacts the amount of other writing I can do each week. Unfortunately, richard’s ramblings… is the one to suffer. Oddly enough, when I get my next full-time position, I honestly believe I’ll have more time to write — mostly because I’ll be permanently reattached to a computer and will need the occasional break.
