Back to school

The summer ended, all too quickly the last two months has gone by. The kids are back in school for 2 weeks now. While my "struggle" with getting my kids to & from school is very easy (they walk/bike to school by themselves), I'm reminded by others how difficult it can be.
This leads me to remind young parents/couples to really pay attention when they buy their house. They want to buy a house in a good school district, and just as importantly, they want to make sure that the house is a walkable distance to all the schools (elementary, middle & high school). This saves so much hassle. No worrying about dropping the kids off at school, picking them up in the afternoon.
I've heard stories from friends & acquaintance where they lose as much as an hour dropping off/picking up their kids at school each day. It's just one less thing to worry about. I was fairly lucky that my house is next to a park, and close to all the schools. I say lucky in that when I bought my house as a single guy, I knew I wanted a good location, but I didn't specifically made sure that it was walkable to school. Now that my kids are in school, I realized how much easier it had made my life.

Mid-life crisis musing

I've been wondering about mid-life crisis for the last few years. When it would show up? How it would show up? And how would I deal with it?

I've decided I won't have a mid-life crisis, because most of the time, those people would do something stupid/crazy/wild to recapture their youth. I don't need to do that. I'm married to a woman who looks like my daughter when we're out together. How much younger can I get?

On a more serious note, I think the important thing is to assess your life and be thankful for all the good things in it. If your life isn't what you thought/hoped it would be, then look into yourself and see what you can do to make it better. But to run away from your problems is to take the coward's way out.

I read this quote in the New York Times and thought is was insightful:
“If you spend your entire life searching for keys — the key to happiness, the key to success, the key to health, the key to love — you may become startled and somewhat humbled at the end of your time on this planet to realize that no keys were to be found because there never were any locks.”
I see it as that there are no limitations, no secrets. Life is what you make of it. It's up to you. Go live your life.

I sometimes joke with my wife that my favorite quote is: "Eventually, why not now!"
It can be good or bad, depends on how you use it. But if you're waiting until "retirement" to start doing things like traveling, learning for knowledge's sake, reading for pleasure, being more active in the community, doing more volunteering, etc.... you might as well start now.

Thang

How to give of yourself

Whatever you do something for someone else, "you must always make sure that you are genuinely enjoying yourself. Doing things for other people's sake will lead to feelings of corrosive resentment that will then find expression in some unhealthy fashion, like cancer. Your first responsibility is to your own happiness. If you are unhappy and you do things merely out of a sense of duty rather than genuine love and generosity, then others will sense that and ugliness will result." (Tom Hodgkinson - writer for Slate.com)

This is what I think about helping/taking care of other people, but can't always articulate as clearly as this person did. Hopefully, I will keep this in mind.

Exercising

Went for a 14 miles run/walk last Saturday. It took 3 hours but it got done. I'm going to try to do this once a month, and see if I can get the time down to 2 hours 30 minutes by year end.

The blog has been dead since last August, this is due to the fact that not much is happening, and that time is going by so fast now. Will try to be more frequent about this.