Outdoors and Travel

Friday, June 24^th, 2022, at 12:39 PM Alaska Time

Contents

• Introduction

Introduction

On reading my earlier model of life-categories I found that I had a section called “Adventure and Outdoors” which I think had the intention of preserving activities I really enjoyed most as a young child and teenager. I wanted to explore, see new and unexpected things, and would hike through the woods, and walk to new destinations and locations, to keep this kind of feeling going. I would do this while alone, and through this activity, in part, knew I enjoyed time with myself at least as much if not more than time with others, and even thought I would like life as a hermit in nature. Today I’ve updated it to incorporate travel, but admittedly I’ve forgotten somewhat the thrill of the more adventurous aspect, which I intend to reintroduce. While I travel quite a lot, and visit many places I’ve never been before, it does not have the same feel it once had, and is now more of a perpetuation of a lifestyle than an adventure, although I think it can easily be both, and one would think visiting new locations frequently would be a good way to keep that feeling.

Outdoors has always been important to me, and while work has distracted from attention to nature, I intend to revisit it perhaps less in a travel context and more in a personal context with the nature and parks, and my property around me.

For now I’m leaving this category in a deprioritized location because of the amount of travel and visitation of the outdoors I’ve experienced over the years after first creating this form. I mentioned in my bio and stats page, that I have 700,000 miles of driving, and about 1.5 million miles of flight. With such extensive travels I certainly have seen several lifetimes worth of destinations. I’ve traveled so much, that it hardly pleases the way that it did before. I’m somewhat jaded as far as travel goes, and I mostly expect something similar in pattern to what I’ve seen before, even if it is something new.

With work as a consultant I’ve flown to many different cities, stayed in many different hotels (I have lifetime Marriott Platinum Status for living in their hotels about 2 years, adding visits together).

Travel has been incorporated into my lifestyle. I live in Anchorage, Alaska now, and the Southwest of the United States with Las Vegas as my hub, and Kailua-kona, Hawaii. Seasonal travel in residence ensures I will have plenty of variety in my life as far as things to see and places to go, even if I don’t plan any vacation. For my business, customers are always someplace different, and so I have opportunities to visit them wherever their headquarters happens to be in the United States and abroad.

Once again, this is an area where I have to say my mission in my moral philosophy and in my personal-form and life-categories project has been a success. The work with this is mostly completed, as there is now nothing to do to fulfill the goals. The point of the form and the philosophy is to become something that includes the plan already. I’ve become something that definitely includes my plans as far as travel and outdoors goes. My early goal of moving to Alaska, and living in nature has also been accomplished, which really does mean my visions of what I would do when younger have actually happened and I think were greatly exceeded.

As I write this I’m thinking somewhat anew about how I can utilize this section to my benefit, and I think it is by returning to something more basic, which is consistent with the goals of a retiree. I can spend more time in parks around me paying more attention to the details of the smells and sights, of the animals and plants nearby, up close and with plenty of touching, rather than thinking about where else I can be and go, and what part of the world is missing from my experience. Maybe I can return a bit more to visiting local parks for athletics and sporting. It was enjoyable recently to play soccer and basketball in different parks in Las Vegas, places in ARizona and elsewhere. It is somewhat like a return to early youth, which was very pleasant for its richness of natural experience, which lead to extensive travels, but was already quite nice as it was.

There are some benefits to early retirement. Retirement is considered a major health related milestone in the Psychology and Medical professions. It can have a harmful impact on life, if a transition does not occur well. Instead of waiting until I’m very old to experience it, it is better to experience it first when younger, to learn it well for later.

Oddly, it does not appear to me that there is any milestone that should not be learned first to have it again better later. We simply follow tradition, and expect that since we live 100 years, that we ought not plan for a life that is 1000 years. While prudent to plan for a life that is 100 years, it is not prudent to forget that reasons for the plans involve living to 100 and not thinking about what it would be like if it were longer. If we were to live to 1000, perhaps retirement would happen many times and not once. Maybe marriage and other things would happen repetitively too. Again, this relates to our limitations on thinking related to the calendar and our lives, and cycles that could occur and not only those that are planned for us Cycles and Shifts.

• Next Section: Bibliography, Citing, and Referring
• Contents
• Main Contents