« Mass Mayhem | Main | Time for some desert... »

October 16, 2003

On the road again... (LA-Phx-JTree)

Seems like I haven't stood still in months. In the past this would have made me anxious, feeling that I've 'wasted time'. In my current context, this life, without a sense of passing time, is enjoyable. I do not feel like any time was 'wasted'. Rather, I have a sense that it was time well spent; lived to the fullest. Maybe I am beginning to tame the beast that has chased me my whole life. Only time will tell. :)

I'm leaving in an hour for LA. On the way, I'll stop and see some old friends I haven't seen in a long time. Than I'll be in LA with the Cnation gang. Saturday is my brothers birthday, which is turning out to be quite a Cnation reunion. My parents are in LA for the week as well.
Sunday I'll leave LA for the dry land I grew up in. Phoenix. For as many years as I can remember, I've gone home for the holidays or some other 'event'. These purpose driven visits left little time for friends. As such, I've fallen out of touch with most of my old friends, save a few. Given the lack of purpose in or surrounding this visit, I'm hoping to spend some quality time with my family and friends I haven't seen in a long time. I have to admit, given the 'great experiment', I'm more than a little curious how most of them ended up. In studying the people around me I have little context other than the short time I've known them. With my old boyhood friends, I have the insight of knowing where they came from. Finding out where they are now in relation to where they were when I left them should prove enlightening. This makes my ulterior motives sound cold, but beyond the pure research aspect of my visit, I really do miss these people and genuinely want to know what has become of them. Many of them are proving hard to track down. This only amplifies my realization of how long it has been since I had contact with these people whom I once considered best friends.

Some people say they regret nothing. I regret quite a lot, but at the same time can see the positive results of prior actions which I now regret. I regret not keeping in touch with these people and the only positive thing I can see to come out of it is a better sense of how important keeping in touch with old friends is. Since part of who we are is defined by our own reflection off of others, who we choose to reflect against plays an important role. Reflecting off of old friends can either stifle our growth, or show us how far we've come. For myself, I think the latter is more likely. I'll have an entire week in Phx with nothing to do, but spend quality time with my friends and family.

Early Saturday morning, I'll drive out to Joshua Tree to meet up with my old climbing partner Steve S. for 3 days of good old fashion trad climbing. Climbing so much in Tuolumne Meadows has made my head strong, but I've spent most of my time on run-out slab as opposed to JTree's vertical cracks. I am quite curious how my head will fare.

In other news. Sarah's brother, Ben just got engaged. They will be married Nov 22 in San Francisco. So, just three weeks after I get back from JTree I'll be off to the bay area. I love San Francisco and relish any opportunity I get to visit that fine city. I probably couldn't live there, but I love to visit.

While away, I'll still be online checking email and updating my blog.

Posted by wonko at October 16, 2003 10:51 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wayfargone.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/148

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?