Hey there. Remember me? Apologies for being gone so long.
No one got lost and there hasn’t been a shortage of ideas for posts. The problem has been that I haven’t been outside much over the last few months, and that’s usually what triggers my desire to keep writing posts.
It’s not all bad though. One of the reasons I’ve been inside so much is that I’ve been working on a book about my 2014 Tour Divide adventures. The first draft has been completed. Prior to the Tour Divide, the longest piece I had ever written was probably a technical manual for software that I developed. After the Tour Divide, I managed 20,000 words when describing the race day by day. Having that many words but still having to leave out many of the details prompted me to expand on the race, some personal stories, and more about the people I encountered.
More details are sure to follow as I get closer to finishing it.
During the writing process, I found myself writing words such as:
analyze, vistas, over-thinking, gear setup, planning, sunset, scenery, moment
The only common theme between these is that they are from two sides of the same person. There was often a balance I tried to strike between enjoying the moment and analyzing every little detail of the 2700 mile adventure.
Then, in November, I read the following paragraph from Jill Homer in her post ‘Never-Fail Getaway‘ (emphasis added).
This falls back to my love of the outdoors, without which I have no doubt I’d be a much sadder person. There are a number of psychological and philosophical implications that I don’t want to delve into for this particular blog post, but I find it endlessly fascinating — and amusing — that simple movement through outdoor spaces is so highly valuable as an experience. I could disappear for hours into an echo chamber of rehashed information and reactive observations, or I could just get on my bike and pedal it to a quiet redwood grove, where sunlight never touches the forest floor in November, and listen to the crush of leaves beneath whirring tires and the almost harmonized burbles from a nearby stream. All I have to do is go there, and I feel happy. These are my two sides — the one that yearns for information with a desire to understand, and the one that yearns for quiet with a desire to simply be.
Yes, that last sentence has been sitting and churning in my head since November. Things have been severely lacking here.
My two sides are a cyclist that enjoys the vistas and an engineer that analyzes data. One is heads up. The other heads down. Or to put it visually, this is where I split my time:
But I can’t be the only one that has this experience.
What are your two sides?
Do you find that you are able to complement one with the other?
Do you force yourself to split time between the different worlds?
