Cold Comfort for Change

I like to read a lot of blogs, and sometimes I get mad when they haven't been updated in a few days (or weeks).  But then I started my own blog, and I realized why.  And the reason is kind of depressing:  For a great majority of a person's life, nothing really happens.  I mean, I could go into detail about what is happening at work (cool stuff, actually.  I spent Monday and Tuesday on a boat tooling around Lake Champlain), or what is happening in the world (mid-term elections . . . Zzzzzzz . . .), or what I'm doing around the house (mostly picking up leaves), but there really isn't anything THAT interesting.  And that's kind of sad.  But I have a theory about why this is.

I've been formulating this theory for a while, and I actually started writing a screenplay (a ski movie of course) based on this idea.  Throughout a person's life, they make decisions.  The decisions have various consequences, but as people age, they generally fall into the trap of trading security for spontaneity, comfort for craziness, and protectionism for pizazz.   When I used to live in an apartment, I had the ability to up and move whenever I wanted.  I decided to buy a house, and now I'm tied down to a mortgage, maintenance, and upkeep.  When I had a crappy job at Target (and a fun job ski instructing), it wouldn't matter if I just left one day, never to return.  Now, kind of tied down to my job (it's such a good job, and I definitely want to stay until I'm vested in the retirement system).  In these cases (and many others), I made a decision to change, thinking that my life would be better, but I've decreased my ability to just get out and go.  Doing the things that people are "supposed" to do in their life seems to have put me in a cage.

So day to day life has become a boring consequence of decisions I made earlier.  Go to work to pay the bills, pick up the leaves to maintain equity, pay some money to fund my retirement.  Are these the kind of things that are fun to read about in a blog?  No!  You know what would be fun to read about in a blog?  Me contemplating a trip to Europe for Oktoberfest.  Me wondering which ski area parking lot I'm going to park my rig in for the winter.  Me stepping out my door to the first powder day of the season. 

I've been trying to decide what form I want this blog to take.  There are a lot of Ski blogs that are generic ski news sites ("Mammoth has 3 new Snowcats!", "Killington Opens on November 13th!").  And there are some ski blogs that tell a story ("Skiing in the Shower", on my blogroll on the right, tells a pretty compelling story of a woman trying to make the PSIA Alpine Demo Team and sacrificing a lot to do so).  I'm hoping that this site will be like the latter.  While I might not be in touch with my emotions (or even a very good writer), I'm hoping that this blog will chronicle a transformation.  I want to change from somebody that has something exciting happen every few days to someone who lives every day like an adventure.  I want the adventure to never stop, and for every blog post to make you say "Wow . . . I wish I was there."