A new chapter
What are you postponing that doesn't deserve to wait?
Another triathlon season has kicked into gear and the travel madness has begun again. I say madness even though there is some nomadic instinct that it satisfies within me, without which I would not feel complete. As so often it’s a conflicting thought in my head since travel takes away time from my family but between Emma, friends and family we always seem to find an often last minute solution to enable a life less ordinary. This means I’m on the road for a good 2 months whilst only coming home to either pick up or drop off my wife and kids.
First up was a bucket list trip, Heli skiing in Iceland with 3 good friends. We went from perfect powder on day one to slush on day 2 and a mixed bag on day 3. A mixed bag that however contained my first proper avalanche. The picture of the ground cracking up between my skis might stick with me for a while but I got lucky and skied myself out of harms way. It’s interesting how slow this huge amount of snow starts to roll. It all seems so calm until it isn’t. Unfortunately our guide wasn’t quite so lucky and took the full brunt of the avalanche as he was unaware of what was building behind him. Two of the boys saw it all unfold from the top, the third had some very good intuition and decided to sit this one out and wait in the helicopter. Our guide has some fractures and will be out for a few months but in essence, we’re all fine.
Interesting to me is that it has not been the traumatic experience I would have expected. It was a firm reminder to stop wasting time, to address this new chapter in life head on and not wait for things to just magically appear. Productivity is one side of it, not taking the little things for granted the other.
I think of it like a cold glass of chardonnay (I´m still a lightweight) with a hot summers day lunch. Colors become a little brighter, laughter a little more freely and conversations a little more engaging.
And hence its been the catalyst to start a new creative output, one that I´ve much flirted with for a long time but always found an excuse to put off. Sharing what’s on my mind, some of the stuff I learned the hard way, insights to the business of being a pro athlete and how I try to avoid the decay of an aging former pro athletes body for as long as possible. This is not set in stone, just some ideas so feel free to send me a message with what you’d like to see more of.
Noticing life in technicolor,
Jan