I just recently came home from a week in Florida. I was there for a Young Life conference and had a fabulous time...um...conferring. A week is a good length of time for that type of January getaway. Just long enough to stockpile some serious sunshine and then realize that I miss the Black Hills terribly.
With the exception of one half-day trip to Cocoa beach, I spent the rest of my time in Florida trapped in what I like to call the T.I.P. (Tourist Industry Prison,) a roughly 50,000 acre block of land just outside of Orlando City Limits, owned mostly by Disney, consisting entirely of theme parks and resorts, and bearing very little resemblance to the "real world" what so ever. It is sort of a realm of existence unto itself, where corporately brainwashed people are willing to pay nine dollars for a bottle of water and fifteen dollars (a piece) for collectible character pins and twenty-three dollars for a parking space, all in the name of American-style escapism. And while the palm trees are lovely and the warm, temperate climate constitutes year-round outdoor living, you never really feel like you've been outside. Thus, my quasi-vacation-invoked claustrophobia. I came home with a desperate need to just "get outdoors;" to wander on a path where you don't expect to see a friendly, underpaid, cleanly uniformed employee with gloves and a "litter-picker-upper" thingy and a trash bag around the next corner. You know, a place where the landscape hasn't been landscaped.
My plans were to spend today wandering around somewhere up in the hills. I didn't have to work, and I'm finally on the uphill side of this nasty cold-virus thing...so I was rearing to go. Unfortunately, it's just too dang cold. I mean, I'm no wimp, but jeepers! It's freezing out there! I have yet to acquire the Patagonia Capilene Baselayers (that I so smoothly sell lots of at my little shop) required to make hiking in single digit temps safe or reasonable. So I've the next best thing. Took up temporary residence at my usual corner table at a coffee shop to spend a few hours people watching, working (or at least thinking about working), writing, and catching up on my newest interest...reading. It's amazing the things that fall by the wayside when you let life control your life.
So, with that, I'm going to move across the coffee shop to a bigger table and join about half of my family for lunch. Then I'll probably move back to this table and read some more.
Life is good.
(And P.S., no, I'm not missing Florida yet.)
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