This may be revealing what’s behind the curtain or something, but back at the end of January this year, I made a resolution to post to this blog at least three times a week. It had to do with intentionally making time for what I love and what’s important to me–in this manifestation, the intersection of biking and writing.
With only a few travel-related exceptions, I’ve kept to my three-times-a-week goal.
(though you’ve probably noticed that sometimes I cheat by just posting random bike-related pictures like this one;)
I mention this only because now that my summer work schedule is in full swing, it’s becoming much more difficult to keep up.
During the summer, I spend a lot of time taking kids camping. It’s basically the best job ever, but it does mean that a typical work week from June until the end of August is somewhere between 60 and 70 hours. I say that not to complain (because let’s face it, how fricken awesome is it to get paid to teach kids about nature?? And to get paid to camp??) but just to give you an idea of how often I’m away from home. Camping, you may realize, generally involves being out in the woods somewhere in a tent, not in your own house. So I spend a lot of the summer in my tent somewhere, away from my computer, and away from bike adventures.
All that to say that posting on a blog three times a week is more difficult when several evenings of the week are already spent away from home, and the other evenings have quality-time-spent-with-the-sweetie written all over them. Then add to that the fact that I keep scheduling my weekends away: there are just so many amazing things to do in life, and I get so excited about them, and then when I stop to take a breath it’s already August and I wonder how I still managed to miss so many of the wonderful things that happen around here during the summer.
(This is one reason why I’m so crazy glad that I commute everywhere by bike, because if it weren’t ingrained into my life that anywhere I go takes two wheels and some pedaling, I think I would spend a lot of time being unhappy that I’m not getting enough exercise.)
(though while I’m not biking I am learning a shit-ton about edible wild plants! More here:)
So forgive this post that’s more introspection than anything actually bike-related, but I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to balance all these things–biking and writing included–that I want to do with my time during these glorious summer months. As always, I’m optimistic that I can basically do everything, including keeping up with ye old carfreerambles, but forgive me if I seem to disappear sometimes.
That being said, if you call me and want to go for a bike ride, especially at unconventional and I’m sure seemingly random times, I’ll still want to go with you. And some of the time, I’ll probably even still be able to go:)