Journals

There is more activity on the Trail Journals site now. Some folks have already started hiking the Appalachian Trail this year, others are making final plans. You would think I would be excited reading the journals like I was last year. Especially since I am going to hike the approach trail to the beginning of the AT in a couple of weekends and may get to meet some of these same people. But tonight reading the journals depressed me. I feel so out of shape and generally out of that flow. So, I got up from my chair and packed my gym bag with clothes so I can go to the gym and work out again tomorrow after work. I then got out my backpack and emptied it of the things I had packed in it during the move and started laying out what I'll need for this coming weekend in Atlanta. I will take the backpack I think rather than a suitcase, and I'll definitely take my sleeping bag and sleeping pad so I can crash on the floor if necessary.

A few of the folks who's journals I read regularly aren't posting much lately. I know these things wax and wane. On one hand it is good to have routines jostled a bit to keep out of a rut, but it makes my internet cruising feel out of whack when my usual sites have nothing new to say.

Now, a bit of philosophy from my world... Henry David Thoreau distilled down the basic needs of man to the need to stay warm. Food, clothing and shelter exist primarily to keep us warm, keep the vital heat within us. George Carlin chimed in with the fact that a house is just a place to keep your shit. I decided after cleaning house the past two weekends that the vast majority of house cleaning is just taking out the trash from the processes of keeping warm and storing my shit. From doing dishes to emptying the wastebaskets of the packaging food arrived in, to doing laundry and sweeping, it is all just taking out the trash or waste products of staying warm and storing my shit. So, I obviously need to find more efficient ways to stay warm and store my shit so that I have more time and money to do fun stuff. Looked at this way, spending time figuring out how to reduce the packaging that food and other necessities come in will reduce the time needed to deal with the trash. Figuring out what really are necessities and not buying stuff that I don't need will (hopefully) reduce the size house I need to store all this shit and the time spent cleaning up after it. This is all still thoughts in progress so I haven't come up with much of an action plan. It is what made me decide to go with buying the water filters so I would stop buying individual bottled water, though. A tiny step here, and tiny step there.