Downshift Musings

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

Diane Ackerman

Wow. I can’t believe I have not written any blog post in almost a year. I think it really speaks to the state of my mind and my life that I have not felt the capacity to think deeply, and that is really scary. The photo above is of one of my favorite places to think. Walking in the cemetery a few blocks from my house gives me a little break before work starts, to let my mind wander and to contemplate all of the lives memorialized on the headstones that I walk by. I find it beautiful and one of the few peaceful places that I get to spend time in these days. But is that seriously messed up?

When I think back to when I started this blog I was looking for a way to slow life down. I’m still struggling with that. Maybe that’s why I Iove pilgrimage experiences so much. Daily life gets reduced down to the bare necessities, which frees the mind and soul for the hard work of figuring out why we are here and what we are meant to be doing.

These days life is pretty different that it was. The kids are grown. Tristan has left the nest for Richmond, VA and is building a career in technical theater (lighting design). Genevieve is working hard towards her goal to be a floral designer. Even my role at work has changed drastically. Since February I have been a software engineering manager at The Home Depot, which means every day is not about me and my contributions, but about servant leadership, about enabling and growing other engineers. I love it, but my brain is 100% booked from 8 until 5. The days flow by like a river in flood.

The pandemic sent me home to work, now permanently. There will be no going back into the office, ever. This will also be my very last “job”. I am no longer interested in a career beyond where I am now. Life is running short and it is too precious. I have so much more I want to do and see than I can fit into 3 weeks of vacation a year!

My body is giving me messages too. The foot that always aches without healing; the broken thumb that is screaming at me months after x-rays showed the bone had knitted; the rarity of un-broken sleep.

And so, to live the width of life… I fill my head with spiritual study and language (becoming fluent in Portuguese once again), dreaming and adventures.

This summer Rich and I walked the Kerry Way in Ireland with friends, which had been a pandemic-delayed expedition. The next adventure will be a trip to Lisbon in late December with the family and Tristan’s girl friend Molly.

My spirit over the past few years has been drawn to both Benedictine monastic practices and Celtic Christianity. And the Camino still calls. Hopefully next Spring Rich and I will head back to Portugal to walk the Camino de Santiago from Lisbon to Porto to celebrate our 30th anniversary. And I will ecstatically unplug from Outlook, WebEx, Zoom, Teams and all of those other monsters that control my day!