I see my friend Mowgli about once a year, at least that’s what my text message feed looks like. Annually, we usually hit up the Provo Skate Park. Even though I never technically went to highschool, I met him at Provo High. We were skaterats, tight, and down to skate whenever and wherever. He’s the reason I say “no worries,” and “gnarly”. I even once joked that the only person I’d be cool with taking my girlfriend out on a date would be him. As memory has it, I think he did once, like, morp or something like that. He is the sort of kid you wouldn’t know was Mormon. In fact, I didn’t even know he was until we were skating one day and he told me that he had gotten his mission call. I was taken aback.
Today was that once a year skate meeting. Afterwards, we, as we always do, committed to hanging out more, skating more often. But it rarely happens. Here’s hoping to change that. While we there I threw down a buttery from blunt down the slope ledge, and I did a fakie switch-nose manual fakie flip out. It was the first one I’d ever done. It was an easy day, a good day. But the better I get, the less stamina I have. Time is running out—to film that is.
As you may know, one of my goals for 2017 is to film my retirement part. The snow is melting and the season is upon me. I fear this will be my last opportunity to film anything. Age and responsibilities mount as I wrestle through the mind-field of life. How can I justify doing something that I want to do in the midst of everyday pressures to be responsible and “grown up”? If she knew I was still skateboarding my dear Granny would be rolling over in her grave! It’s not just skating, though, you see. It’s a dozen other things that list around in my mind that I have great desire to commandeer and bring into fruition. It is hard to find the time to get anything done when my head is home to a rolodex of endless thoughts and ideas. That on top of the perpetual uncertainty as to why anything matters makes this life a mere menagerie of sensations, both good and bad that flits by on the eternal wings of times, of which itself (of all things) isn’t as certain as anything else in this world that immediate sensations would have you believe.
There are some things that I am grounded in, however, and for the sake of productivity I want to share a new game plan with you. First of all, it seems that I am very concerned with getting what is in my head out before I die. The problem is, as mentioned, there are a million things that I think about every single day. Finding out the most important ones, finding time to work on them, and staying motivated to finish what I’ve started takes significant amounts of energy, especially when it is so hard to focus on one thing at a time. My emotional power is seeping out into the void leaving me continually exhausted when I know I can harness it for greater purposes. Entropy duels with my spirit, and my mind reels. In the words of the late Glenn Frey of the Eagles I have “let the sound of [my] own wheels drive [me] crazy,” (that’s not mentioning the seven women on my mind.) I think the trick is to be able to harness that craziness for creative purposes to one degree or another before you die. I have a plan, though.
Here we go: Harnessing
Day by day plan. Work, aka. job, aka, mandatory labor for continued existence is an everyday thing, and one that I will not mention in my plan below as it is necessary, not especially fulfilling. My goal with what follows is to fulfill my underlying desires, nothing more. I will dedicate individual days to each goal.
Sunday…