...it’s to make the very best of the brand new day that is handed to me.
How do I do that? By working diligently at bettering myself, in learning new stuff, fine tuning what I’m already doing pretty well, making the right decisions as much as my competences allow it, and making a concerted effort at staying on the line that I have defined for myself.
Is this a form of perfectionism? No, for me it’s a form of striving for constant betterment, along some lines that motivate me and that I consider well worth the effort.
I also believe that if the entire humanity was disciplining its thinking along these lines, we’d make some big progress, especially under the shadow of Putin’s imbecility, as well as that of others leaders like those of China, Iran, North Korea and also Trump and his cronies...
What’s happening in Ukraine is awful, yet was totally predictable with an evil leader like Putin.
The man is a monster, yet it’s amazing how certain politicians or celebrities are incapable of sound judgment and are totally blind to the true character of this Russian dictator and his desire to inflict harm on innocent people.
Perhaps, should we ask these folks to intervene or negotiate with the ex-KGB chief, to get Russian troops out of Ukraine, but these guys, except for our ex-president, must be hard to reach for any kind of response or comment.
I’m thinking of course about former President George W. Bush who in 2001, famously looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and peered into his soul: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy,” Bush said in remarks he later regretted. “. . . I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
Trump has probably no regret for what he said when Putin started his aggression against Ukraine: He praised his invasion as “genius” and called him “very savvy” for describing the troops aligned on the Ukrainian border as peacekeepers.
Then there are also some of my famous countrymen, including actor Gérard Depardieu who is a fan of Putin. After getting caught for tax evasion in France, he hasn't stopped claiming that life is sweet in Putin's country. This new Russian citizen even goes as far as saying in a June 2015 issue of Vanity Fair: "I am ready to die for Russia because the people there are strong; I don't want to die like an idiot in France today.”
Then there’s Jean-Claude Killy who was asked by Le Parisien newspaper as recently as February, 2018: “Are you still close to Vladimir Putin?” He didn’t hesitate a bit: “Yes, he is a real friend. I had lunch with him again on January 10 at the Kremlin. We play hockey, we go to the mountains, to Siberia, we go rafting…
I worked with him for seven years preparing for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, in my forty-three trips there, he was practically always present, he was running the Games, we had more than sixty meetings in total. I appreciate the man, we often call each other, I know his family, his daughter…”
So, is there a chance these two Frenchmen might revised their flawed judgment on the man, or better yet have a sway on bloodthirsty Putin? I wouldn’t bet the farm on it!
This morning as I was meditating I felt content. That’s it, just content.
Nothing
was wrong anywhere in my my mind, my body or my life, and I was not
feeling the pain, the anguishes, the suffering, the doubts that have
been part and parcel of my becoming who I am.
Was everything perfect? Probably not, but that wasn’t the important element.
My
contentment at the moment was what really counted. I had forgotten all
of the negative stuff, close or remote, and none of it mattered to me.
What counted was the feeling that that I was myself and that I felt good about who I had become. Nothing more, nothing less. Building
who we are isn’t always pretty, easy or painless, but once in a while
isn’t it great to stop, even just for a moment, to contemplate the
current result and feel good about it?
No just that, but isn’t it good too, to feel that if we take care of what we must do, it can only get better?
For a while now, I have been pondering if I really needed an electric vehicle to replace my old Subaru.
Yes, I WANT a Tesla and have placed an order for one that should be ready for delivery around next May or June, but the question is, do I really NEED that car?
On the plus side, I want one because it’s the right vehicle to own if I want to do my share of limiting my CO2 output, plus, it seems like a great experience for me as a driver after test-driving it a few times, besides it’s cool, modern and it’s the thing to have at this point of time.
On the minus side there are many issues that aren’t too attractive about that car. The high price (about 50% more than ICE engine cars) is one of them and is hard to mitigate with low maintenance costs, uncertain tax credits, low cost of charging, higher wear and tear on tires and insurance costs. T
hen the fit and finish has so far left a lot to be desired, the riding comfort of models 3 and Y isn’t that great. Then there are other practical issues, like on-the-road recharging, cold weather impact for those of us leaving in a cold, snowy environment, cargo room debatable, no spare tire, car wash a bit complicated, ski racks going against the vehicle efficiency and most importantly, battery that degrades with time.
All these consideration leave me hesitant as the Tesla I have ordered will be delivered late spring, and I wonder if I shouldn’t go with a plug-in hybrid instead, but these, just like Teslas, are hard to come by at reasonable prices...
While the snow continue to remain conspicuously absent in the West, we’ve heard and read a lot about "megadrought" in recent days, without being sure what it meant and what it could compared to, so I have done some research and found that it represents a period of 20 to 30 years where conditions are drier than average.
There may be some wet years in between, but condition remain in a drought situation through that particular period. We aren’t talking about the droughts we typically hear that only last a few months or a couple of years.
So the big news is that new findings from research conducted at UCLA have found that the last 22 years are now the driest out of the last 1,200 years in the Western U.S. That kind of statistic has earned the last two decades the classification of "megadrought", and is also suggesting that it is exacerbated by humanity’s heating of the planet.
The researchers found the current drought wouldn’t be nearly as severe without global warming and estimated that 42% of the drought’s severity is attributable to higher temperatures caused by greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere.
In their research, the scientists examined major droughts in southwestern North America back to the year 800 and determined that the region’s desiccation so far this century has surpassed the severity of a megadrought in the late 1500s.
The authors of the study also concluded that dry conditions will likely continue through this year and, judging from the past, may persist for years, so let’s not get our hopes to high about deep powder for the near future!
If, just like me, you didn’t pay attention, yesterday was February 22, 2022.
If you wrote it 2/22/22, it was actually a palindrome, meaning it read the same forward and backward, just like “Abba” the pop group.
I thought it was some type for drone, but it’s something quite different! It also fell on a Tuesday, which is now referred to as Twosday. The date is February 22, 2022. When you write it, 2/22/22, it's a palindrome, meaning it reads the same forward and backward.
It also falls on a Tuesday, which is now referred to as Twosday. But is there a spiritual meaning of the number 22 since numerology has become so important?
According to some opportunistic experts, “The number 22 represents double the amount of energy... In numerology, the number 22 represents the fulfillment of one's greatest aspirations, as well as a sense of strength and accomplishment. Be aware that the number 22 is among the most powerful numbers, so if you see it, don't be surprised!”
But, back to our story, to make this date even stronger as a palindrome, it’s still one whether it's written in the United States format of month, day, year, and in the format most other countries us that is day, month, year.
I never stopped being amazed at how ski moguls form on virtually all ski runs that aren’t groomed. Yet, these amazing geometric formations are not willfully planned or constructed; they just organize spontaneously as a consequence of skiers turning and moving snow.
It begins as a series of S-shaped turns that cross over small piles of snow left by other skiers. After a while, these mounds of snow reach a critical height that is felt and seen by skiers and force them to turn on the downhill side of the developing bump.
The obvious paradox is that skiers descending a slope with large bumps practically can’t turn where they would like to. Trying to turn on the uphill or concave flank of a mogul prevents the skis from easily pivoting while turning on the convex side, or top of the mogul, enables them to turn easily as they scrape the snow with their tails from the downhill side of the moguls.
By doing so, skiers push snow down and pile it up on the uphill side of the following mogul. As a consequence, each mogul loses material on its downhill side that gets transferred to its uphill side. The net effect is an optical illusion in which moguls seem to migrate uphill, but the overall mass of snow keeps on moving downhill as it inexorably gets eroded through gravity.
According to certain folks, bump skiers could be compared to fluids moving over sediments, ripples that form when a river flows over sand, the creation of sand dunes, or even washboard patterns produced by vehicles on dirt roads. The mogul spacing is a function of a skier’s turning radius and speed as well as their gravitational acceleration and the steepness of the slope.
This is explains why moguls are usually longer at the end of a series of bumps, as skiers tend to move faster as they approach the groomed terrain at the bottom of a ski run, suddenly becoming embolden and needing less control.
Just like other phenomena of self-organization, the high visibility, ubiquity and regularity of ski moguls, make them a work of art, the result of seemingly random ski turns.
As for the regular, geometric pattern of ski moguls, once a mogul gets in line, it never gets out of pattern, because skiers have no other choice but ski their natural pattern, which explains why over a short period of time, the few misaligned bumps fall quickly in proper order, just like a marching band that is first totally disorganized, then lines up into rows, before all members find themselves finally marching in perfect harmony.
Myth: Snow going up the hill (an optical illusion, in reality snow always goes down the hill!)
Moguls have never been seem so plentiful, so big and so deep than this season. So why is it, you might ask?
The answer is easy, with no significant snow in now six weeks, slopes have been intensely eroded by the skiers and snowboarders and nothing has been able to fill the holes on mogul fields and the wind had no chance to spread any new snow on that bumpy surface and bring back the dimpled slopes to their more normal conditions.
Of course, there are snow-cats or groomers, so what are they doing? Well, very little. Moguls on steep terrain are made of snow several month old and that is now wearing thin and also super dry and lacks the humidity, and hence the cohesion, that would normally make it “workable” by most groomers and would in the process, at best dislodge rocks and bring them to the finished, groomed surface.
So ugly and unskiable moguls are here to stay until some significant snow starts falling, but as we get closer to March, time seems to be running out! At least this provides those skiers with strong enough knees to challenge themselves on never-seen-before mega-moguls until the ski area closes the run that have become too dangerous because the moguls are so deep and so sharp.
Of course, on many highly traveled runs like Apex, Mercury, or Copperhead, to name a few, Park City Mountain shouldn’t have played “chicken” and have produce the made man-made snow required on these popular run so they could be worked with grooming equipment. Next blog, we’ll dig deeper into the world of moguls if there’s still some snow left…
The Alpine mixed team event failed to get me excited and grab my full attention. It is a weak race and this time it was even more confusing as usual as one one course (the blue one) was grossly faster than the other.
The timing adjustment isn’t easily understood either by the spectator, and in the end, no one who isn’t close to ski racing really understand what’s going on, can stay focused and interested on the seemingly unequal courses.
Unless it can be made more selective (what happened to the jumps?) it should be dropped from the games. Obviously it’s a relatively easy opportunity for extra-medal to some athletes, but if the event can’t stand on its own two feet it should be taken way, as I have said before…
The Winter Olympics are a wonderful opportunity to catch up with what’s cool among contemporary slope users and have a chance to update one’s wardrobe, fashion elements, moves on snow or cool expressions.
One that finally go my attention is “grabbing” your ski or your board while the athlete is up in the air.
My wife asked me why competitors were doing it, I couldn’t answer it on the spot, and then I found out what I suspected, that grabbing your board comes from skateboarding, as one must grab their board to keep it attached to their feet whenever they got air, since there’s no binding.
While snowboarders (and freestyle skiers) all keep their boards attached via bindings to their legs, that tradition continues (idiotically) because, according to the freestyle experts: “Grabs add control in the air and a tonne of style to one’s jumping. They’re also said to make advanced spins and flips easier to execute…”
Well, this to me, is an archaism as stupid as it is totally unneeded, but go tell that to the guys in charge of judging a sports is totally unrelated to a kind of ski sport what the vast majority of mountain visitors will never even consider...
...shows much more than one athlete not having it together for a series of days at a hugely important event.
It underscores the fact that the United States is a one-gifted-skier-at-a-time organization (Miller, Vonn, Ligety, Shiffrin) not a deep team, as Austria, Italy, Norway and Switzerland are.
Until this changes and something happens in the organization to be more inclusive and collective, let’s brace for more of these sad events.
What happened to Mikaela Shiffrin at the US ski team parallels what Alexis Painturault, from the French ski team, experienced at these Olympics, and the result of their special treatment compared to the rest of the athletes, not to mention the excessive media pressures put onto them.
Yet, an athlete’s bad streak isn’t always avoidable and just like in the stock market, diversification, in the form of a deep and cohesive stable of athletes, always pays off.
This is something Sophie Goldschmidt president and CEO of the U.S. Ski & Snowboard will have to analyze and address when she returns from China...
Of my 37 winter seasons at Park City, this current season is turning out to be one of the worst I’ve ever experienced.
Without even mentioning the dismal and irritating performance of the Park City Mountain resort under Vail Resorts’ management, the snow that fell at Christmas is now wearing, thin, becoming excessively hard and super-bumpy, so when I find myself alone on the mountain, I begin to explore places I’ve never been to or seen before, in an effort to broaden my knowledge of the place.
You may call this “continuing education”. By doing that, I can get a good measure all the nooks and crannies I still am not familiar with, and it shows me, once more, that one is never done learning. This means that the expression “I’m bored and don’t know what to do!” may be found in a teenager vocabulary, but never in a septuagenarian’s.
So, if you wonder what I do when I leave my house, alone, to go skiing, “I keep on exploring!”
A few days ago, my wife asked “You love skiing so much, I wonder why didn’t you race with the Masters after you retired?”
When I heard that, I was at loss for words; right, I couldn’t answer her on the spot, and wondered why I had so little interest for ski racing.
Eventually, though, the answer came to me. It was all about the rules, the regimentation and the exacting timing that are what ski racing is all about, and all the strict boundaries it forced on me. I didn’t want them and didn’t find them pleasurable enough to warrant them.
I love to ski the all mountain, in all kinds of snow, terrain and trees and felt that the grueling discipline called for by training all the time, running gates and being hemmed into that competitive discipline weren’t for me.
In fact, I drew much more pleasure from improvising on challenging terrain than being summoned to follow a specific line around poles, with stringent rules and a repetitive regimen. After digging deeper into the subject, I discovered that several studies had shown the benefits of practicing improvisation for musical artists and the advantages improvising musicians had over their non-improvising peers.
You might say that comparing skiing to music is stretch, but bear with me. A study by researchers from Columbia University shows that trained improvisers can more easily detect different nuances within interchangeable chords and that their brain makes better distinction between different types of musical structures.
More specifically, studies by Charles Limb, a music aficionado who’s also surgeon and otolaryngologist, show that during improvisation, the parts of the brain associated with self expression are highly active whereas parts involved with self-monitoring are quieting down which enables dampening of inhibitions and better access to creativity.
I kind of liked this idea, and, just like for musicians, this is all what my skiing is all about and why you’ll often find me lost in the middle of some trees when I’m on my boards...
During these winter Olympics, there seem to be more and more athletes living and training in one country, for example the United States, and choosing to represent another country on the basis of their double-nationality status.
For the most part (except for Eileen Feng Gu, freestyle skier in halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air events), these athletes would never make their own country of residence’s national team, and still get a ticket to the Olympics by competing for a third party nation like the Philippes for instance where the standards of entry are low enough for them.
I think this is another way to muddy the waters and hurt the already poor credibility of the games. Well, I’d say that if Haiti or Thailand have no local skiers because there’s no snow there, tough luck! That’s the way the planet works, and its many countries should embrace that reality...
Practically, I would urge the International Olympic Committee to add a full residency requirement in order to curb this type of funny business.
In life, there’s always the easy way and the hard way to handle things.
Both options generally offering their own pluses and minuses.
Because I believe that difficulty is often a great teacher and that I always am curious of what will happen, I am, by nature, a fan of the harder way, which makes me looks for it wherever it might hide, when I have to time to pick up a fight with difficulty and measure how well I do in the process.
The net result is that I inevitably will learn something I wasn’t necessarily expecting.
That, I feel, is quite enriching, keeps me on the “edge of my seat” and in the end contributes to maintaining me alert and young!
I’ve never been a fan of the alpine event called super-G, a hybrid between downhill and giant slalom, but closer to the former.
Unlike downhill, it can only be inspected and unlike giant slalom, there’s only one run. The super-G was introduced in 1988, while giant slalom, the real hybrid between slalom and downhill goes back to 1952.
During the current Olympics, I have observed both men and women super-G races, and have came up with more personal observations.
First, its all in the line a racer follows and this is by far the most difficult element for a skier to figure out after inspection and apprehend in course.
Tempo is fast, turns come even faster and with them the actual line is more often a consequence of past moves than a studied, premeditated itinerary. This creates huge surprises (good and bad) and enormous time differences.
Sure, racers should position their turns well before the gate rushes on them and know how to adjust their edges in relation to the steepness of the slope and the quality of the snow, but the events (turns and jumps) occur way too fast for integrating them all into a cohesive strategy.
This means many will miss and a few may be lucky and this, in part, is why, in my humble opinion, this event remains a “filler” and makes very little sense...
Big upsets aren’t new at the Olympics, but it seems that big names like Shiffrin or Pinturault that stand so large in the public eye are more prone to huge disillusion than ever before.
Is it because they are inside a bubble with family members, dedicated coaches and an intense media focus? So much so that they find themselves inside a universe that is perverting their better instincts or making them feel entitled to win no matter what?
We sure are far from the good old days when skiers prepared their own skis themselves and were all equal within a team.
Today’s superstars are so isolated and so personally assisted that they seem to be less capable of handling their material and psychological issues on the fly, making them so much vulnerable than their run-of-the-mill peers when things go sideways.
Most importantly I wonder how the regular members of their team view these prima donnas and deal with them inside their tight-knit community and how the team management juggle with these specail athleter demands and yet, try to run a semblance of team if we still can call their collection of needy athletes that way?
Returning to ski Snowbasin was a fabulous experience this past Monday.
Big mountain, large and long runs, no rocks, no ugly bumps, no crowds! We skied there most of the day and has a fabulous experience which we fell was a welcome contrast from skiing Vail Resorts’ contaminated Park City.
We even rode the gondola with a Park City resident who drivee more than two hours everyday (round trip) or 120 miles, to ski Snowbasin instead of Park City. Neither too practical nor environmental!
As this man should, it made us want to move to Huntsville or Eden and forget about our incompetent and unpleasant operator.
Well, there may be another solution to fix the Vail Resorts demolishing act with Park City Mountain: Have the Colorado base company sell its Utah resort to any established operator that has a tiny bit of common sens; that would be a total game changer!
After her second consecutive quick exit from her best two events, at the Beijing Olympics, Mikaela Shiffrin showed the world that she wasn't a robot, but just human, with all what that means in terms of mind-control, self-doubt and emotions.
No one is totally sheltered from those, or can find a mental coach that can totally shove them aside.
There’s also the undeniable fact that we all learn more from failures than from victories, so in the end, she'll emerge from that series of incidents as an even better person and a much more solid athlete.
For all of us who are older, at the end of one’s life, it almost seems that the thrills of success are somehow paid up, along the way, by an equal amount of pain, sorrow and suffering, through the obstacles that inevitably are thrown in one’s way.
When all is said and done, Mikaela is perhaps be the best prepared individual to bounce back and recover her true strength.
I just finished reading the accompanying book to the documentary “The Beatles: Get Back” that was produced in 2021, directed and produced by Peter Jackson.
The book is told in The Beatles’ own words and is illustrated with hundreds of previously unpublished images of various and sometimes variable quality, including photos by Ethan A. Russell and Linda McCartney.
It covers the making in early 1969 of the Beatles' 1970 album Let It Be (which initially had the working title of Get Back) and some of Abbey Road, and is made from unused footage and audio material originally recorded by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
I haven’t seen the very long docu-series (8 hours) that was broadcast on Apple TV that I don’t subscribe to, but eventually would love to watch.
In it it shows the rather laborious creative of process of making songs and, with it, the strange way creativity works in spite of the best efforts, will and cooperation of people inside and outside. It short, creativity can’t be managed well.
More than anything else, it shows that in spite of what we’ve been told over and over, the tensions between the “Fab Four” were largely overshadowed by an upbeat atmosphere coming from all members and this is heartwarming.
The photo-album book is only too heavy to ready comfortably, but a treasure to a Beatles fan like me!
I don’t know about you, but for me the Olympic Winter Games mean snow-covered, beautiful landscape, not brown, dystopian looking hills like the Xiaohaituo Alpine Skiing Field, site of the alpine skiing events looks like.
Of course, that place, in the Yanqing District, is a suburban district in northwest Beijing, so it’s hard to expect a landscape looking like the surroundings of Megève or Kitzbuhel in what is a heap of dirt crisscrossed by stripes of man-made snow.
This, of course, makes all of that “fake snow” more conspicuously looking as it is said that 50 million gallons of water to make the Alpine events possible, not to mention the huge amount of coal-generated electric power needed to transform it into snow.
We’ve drifted far away from the Cortina or the Squaw Valley Olympics and devolved into the inner-city version of winter sports.
Not a pretty sight! With this setup, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) faces an embarrassing reality about the environmental cost of the Games, including claims the alpine runs were constructed in a protected nature reserve.
“These could be the most unsustainable Winter Olympics ever held,” said Professor Carmen de Jong, a geographer at the University of Strasbourg. She points out that man-made snow is water- and energy-intensive, while also damaging the health of the soil and causing erosion.
No wonder I’m intuitively not impressed, but again with the money-hungry and dictator-friendly IOC, what else should we expect!
It took 13 days after I returned the boots to the store, to learn that Nordica had no replacement boot for me and that the store wanted to offer me a full credit.
I said this won’t work, I had been out these boots for 17 days and I asked for my money back, which it agreed to.
Today, I’m back inside my old boots for a sixth season with new soles and new liners and in fact, they feel much better on my feet than the new one I had bought and my feet and my old boots feel really good as they’re reunited!
With technology at a stand-still in that product category, this goes a long way in my saying: “Ski boots are the most important part of your ski equipment; so, if you find a pair that fits you like a glove, maintain it with care and keep it for as long as you can!”
Almost two years into the pandemic with all the controversy about vaccine and mask wearing among other safety measures, it’s fascinating to see which countries did a great job and which ones failed their citizens, in terms of saving lives.
I’m not talking about Peru, the sad number one in that category, but of “yours truly”, the United States of America, which leads the so-called advanced nation as #21. It is beaten by both Italy and Mexico! This is horrible and is the byproduct of Trump calling the virus a hoax, mocking wearing masks and doing everything he could to ignore the Pandemic.
Canada, which shares our northern border, our lifestyle and our culture has three times less Covid victims per-capita than the USA and is #83, and scores even better than Israel which has done a pretty good job at containing the virus. In fact, if the US had done as well it would have saved more than 600,000 lives!
Yet, a bunch of people are still not pleased with Trudeau’s leadership, go figure...
The UK and France results are pretty deplorable too and stand as an example of incompetent politicians more concerned about their reelection than the welfare of their citizens.
I do not mention China nor Russia as I don’t trust their reporting integrity, but have to underscore the performances of Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan who should be held as example and which best practices we should study when the next pandemic hits.
It's too bad thought that only few people are looking at these comparisons and drawing these obvious conclusions...
I watched part of the teams parade at the 2022 Olympic ceremonies and didn’t particularly like the French uniforms with the characteristic “V” showing the national colors.
I thought it looked bad and didn’t care for the implicit meaning of victory that shape represented.
My favorite uniforms were the Finns’ and I didn’t care much for the Ralph Lauren designed American uniforms either.
I’m sure a lot of unproductive time, much fighting and a tons of politicking go into deciding these uniforms and the messages they’re supposed to represent, but I would always say: “Keep it nice, clean, simple and it’s guaranteed to look stunning!”
I met Knut when I worked with Lange. He was the rep covering Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming.
He loved the industry and was interested by the nuts and bolt aspect of skis and boots.
He was born on October 18, 1942, in Norway,
His family settled in Seattle in 1952, and Knut became a US citizens in 1958. He graduated from Ballard High School in 1960, and from the University of Washington in 1965.
He was a proud “Husky”, rowing and also involved in Nordic skiing and ski jumping. He passed away on December 14, 2021, in Carson City, Nevada at the age of 79, from Alzheimer disease.
Knut got married in 1964 to Betty Christianson after meeting her at a ski race in Sun Valley, Idaho. They had three daughters: Kristin (Andrew) Robison of Carson City, Nevada, and twins Janel (David) Ulrich and Julie (Michael) Broxson of Wenatchee, Washington. He had five grandchildren: Jens, Andreas, Leif, Annika, and Kyla, and two step grandsons: Josh and Jake.
Knut spent his career in the ski industry, first with Pre skis, then Lange, and finally with Goode. I remember staying in his house in Breckenridge. A frugal man, his only indulgence was a Porsche 924.
The last time we met was on the Arrowhead chairlift, near Beaver Creek where he was testing some new Goode composite skis.
Winter isn’t a good season in terms of my time that goes so fast. A lot of it goes into skiing.
Not just pure skiing though!
There is the “getting ready” part, including getting dressed, gathering ALL my stuff, driving over to the ski area, finding a spot to park (now an impossible task) and repeating that backward after skiing.
Then there’s the rest of my day that consumes time like a dry sponge soaks up water.
I have reached a point where it’s difficult to make time for now projects and new activities and I resent it to a large degree. There there’s the unavoidable question: “Should I cut into my skiing?”
That, to me, is almost sacrilegious and I think that time and aging will, in time, take care of that reduction. As they say about fishing: “Time skiing can’t be deducted from a person’s life!”
It's amazing how a certain mindset (optimism or pessimism) can affect what we see and how it can transform our perspective if it is negatively affected by some parasitical influence.
As we grow older, we are more prone to fear of all kind, to avoid change, feel much weaker, defenseless and often refuse to adapt.
This view of the world often tips our own perspective and paints a bleak color on our daily existence, sap our desire and ability to plan ahead and make us question our mere existence.
It is therefore essential to make an effort to think clearly, objectively and to see what’s good and open for us in life. It is therefore crucial to continue making plans, rekindling our own desires, imagining and dreaming at all times.
Sometime, things like dreams that we don’t control can mess us up mentally as they contaminate our minds with images or sensations that run contrary to what we normally need and want.
The same could be said of events, news or movies that affect us in the course of the day.
We need to keep our lenses on life crystal clear at all time and retain our view on our true north, namely what we believe is real, unbiased and in line with our values and don’t let irrational fear of the distortion of influence contaminate our view of the world.
While skiing, a bad fall or a missed passage will never be allowed to remain, without my immediately trying to erase the misdeed and do it over and well the second time.
This applies not just to my skiing, but to my multiple and frequent failures in any other areas of my life. Simple superstition?
Perhaps, but I systematically try to “erase” the mistake through a do-over that generally works out.
I probably don’t want to leave a negative imprint inside my consciousness and this is also, in part, a good reason while fear or regrets never find a fertile ground inside my mind.
I see that routine as a way to redeem myself and leave no bad taste in my mouth.
Have I always followed this procedure? Absolutely not; it’s pretty recent, but I find it works wonders for me.
Each morning when I get up, I’m delighted to know that I’m still a member of that very special club that includes all living humans.
Yep, my membership is still good for another 24 hours!
While that membership is free, it’s totally guaranteed to lapse, but no one, even most of those on death row in America, knows for sure. When it lapses, it often comes a surprise, and generally a bad one for the next of kin, except for the member, once excluded, he can’t realize it fully.
One friend of mine is complaining that they’re too many members, that 2 billion, not 8, would be more than enough, so I told him “You can start by canceling your membership!” but he didn’t find that funny at all.
My plan is to remain a member in good standing for as long as I can. What do I mean by “good standing”? It’s simple, I just remain healthy, mobile and fully spirited.
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