This past week, thanks to a dear friend, I had the opportunity to consider areas I've become less flexible and more prone to "Get off my lawn" Join me as I consider the melt flexiblity needed to not become set in our ways.
This past week, thanks to a dear friend, I had the opportunity to consider areas I've become less flexible and more prone to "Get off my lawn" Join me as I consider the melt flexiblity needed to not become set in our ways.
Hello there friends both old and new. Welcome to the strive seek find podcast. I'm your host chance went home to bite sized lifestyle advice from a fellow traveler on the road to a better life. Brought to you by someone who is a longtime educator, writer, parent, and an outdoor enthusiast, who may just may like a good draft because our future is set not just through our choices, but by our willingness to explore and find a better way. And welcome back to Episode 124 or 25 of the strive seek find podcast about a week ago, a friend hit me what felt like a right hook, verbally Of course. On my birthday, we were at a speakeasy, having a cocktail. And if you've never been to one of these 1920s influenced cocktail bars, you should try them out, sitting there in the dark. Realizing that I need to break with the vibe and use my cell phone to read the menu because I couldn't scan the menu because it was too dark. A little candle on the table. It just wasn't doing glasses or no. And it was a diverse menu of trendy craft cocktails and I had to find something to try. Now, I'm not a whiskey snob unless I'm a whiskey snob. It's not so much that what the whiskey is. I have found that bourbon rye, Irish and most especially Scotch are enjoyable. Most definitely scotch. But I tend to drink them all meat or occasionally on the rocks. Enjoy the nose feel the heat experienced the whiskey as I think about it as whiskey as God intended it. So while I love my gin cocktails, and one of the first signs of summer is a nice ice cold Mojito in my hand. I tend to bulk whiskey cocktails, telling me my favorite Scotch such as Lagavulin 16. is in a cocktail, such as one of my wife's favorite cocktails, I think it's called the boarding pass makes me ask the question, why are they wasting the good stuff? Sidenote here, I promised tonight isn't all about alcohol. For my non cocktail drinking listeners, hold on in the LC. So I continued to go through the pages and pages of variety of cocktails, gin, right. Lots of lots of bourbon and some scotch and discarded a lot of what I saw some for the whiskey, some for the egg white, some, the combination just didn't sound good. And I ended up with an old fashioned a solid cocktail that I'll occasionally drink. And at that point started vociferous Lee complaining about lack of will and 16 being in the boarding pass. This is when she struck the right cross. Hit me chance, perhaps for the second half of your life. Perhaps give yourself permission to try new things. And I felt like I was going down like I'd taken one of Ali's punches to the face. Now let's get started. The pain wasn't here because of the cocktails, which by the way were amazing. But the idea that I had become so set in my ways and stubborn that I wasn't trying new things really bothered me. And the idea that that was how I was being viewed even more so. I wanted to fire back. Yell that that wasn't the case. stomp my feet, hold my breath, you know, the usual fit. But the evidence was there. I walked out of a very cool place having tried only the old fashion and of course they're gin and tonic. And while I love a good gin and tonic I'm not replacing whiskey with the Whitmore's with gin and tonic with the Whitmore's. It just lacks the ring It has made me wonder if my jokes for years about barbed wire at the edge of my lawn machine gun emplacements and screaming Get off my lawn, which I do make a metric ton of have become my reality. So I stepped back and considered. And I've come to the conclusion of, well, sort of saw you whippersnappers Get off my lawn. Actually, that's not that far off for part of my life. And I'm going to stress this part because there are huge parts of my life, I'm constantly thinking about changing and challenging. Cooking, barbecuing, reading, travel, work. I'm always challenging my assumptions, trying new things, and seeing what happens. But for part of the year, or parts of my life, I ended up seeking what I call comfort food. And y'all know what that means, shorthand for something that you just makes you feel warm, you step into easy, and generally, it doesn't take a lot of effort. So for instance, entertainment wise, I haven't been watching a whole lot of new entertainment. I may have seen Star Wars Rebels 15 times this winter, because I can turn it off. At any point, turn it back on, and know exactly what's going on. And I love the story. And I can fall asleep to it. It may be the thing I've watched most this winter, up to and including football. And then there's the hybrids. I have made 10 variations on chili minimum this winter. Now, I call those experiments because I'm trying new recipes. And so it's partially true. But ultimately, I'm still eating chili, rather than expanding my horizons. And yes, by the way, I have found some fabulous new chili recipes that way, the spicy pork yum. But by the same token, I need to search more for other things to try. So I guess in some parts of my life are flexible. And the challenge may be maximizing the parts of my life that are less flexible to get me back to the point where I'm not completely get off my lawn. And now a word from our sponsor. I asked my dad if I could help him become masa. And he said yes. Yes, hope fine people. For my dad's Puck, share this podcast with your friends. Leave with you to leave people for my dad. You can donate to by me and ideas and ideas to keep making podcasts. Thank you for listening me to stray sink by. And I'd like to thank Amelia, age six, for sponsoring this week's podcast. And now back to the show. So two things come to mind as I consider all this. One, I've always thought the key or at least one of the keys to staying young in your mind was to continue to seek new experiences for no other reason than it keeps you excited about what you're doing in life. And I don't care who you are. There's it's a lot better to feel joy in something than to be patiently waiting for the next television show. For instance, the probably the most joyful thing I've done this year is standing near a high mountain lake. Well, the last calendar year rather than obviously 2023. A new place creating new experiences. Or one actually from 2023. Watching my younger two daughters at the local zoo. Now they have been to the zoo before mean we were at the San Diego Zoo last April with them. But we hadn't been to the Boise zoo in years, probably pre COVID And none of us had realized the amount of the zoo that had been read done in that time. It was a first for my kids seeing a crocodile up close, and exploring a place that was both new and exciting, and yet somewhat familiar. And they both loved every minute of it. Even my 11 year old, wasn't going to cool for school, she was legitimately excited to just be a kid. And I'll be honest, there's a lot of points in my life, or I am actively seeking that level of joy. And I don't think I'm alone in that. And next up, there is evidence that keeping your neural pathways from solidifying into concrete is critical. I think it's called neuroplasticity, though please don't quote me on that. But there's evidence in all parts of our life. If you've ever taken a weekend, and just fetched, you walk away, tired, you walk away, kind of mentally limping, because you're wondering why you're not processing as fast. This is different from just rest time. But at the end of a lazy day, you're exhausted. And you're not thinking nearly as clearly if you'd been up and moving. This, pleasantly long weekend was a great example of this. I'm starting to learn an entirely new workflow for the podcast, and it's got a long ways to go. I was able to upgrade some of my equipment, I get to play with the road caster pro the original now. And the learning that's come out of that about how to use what I already have. plus the new tool, and how to make it work within the podcast has honestly been exhilarated. It's made me excited to not just play with a new toy, because it's tool. But it's the same concept. Anytime you get a new tool you get excited to play with it. But it's made me reconsider some episode things I've been doing, how I can make use of the improved technology to to improve the podcast. And get really excited as I have gotten the sense that my sound quality improved with just the little bit I have learned so far. Great, for instance, so this is just learning how to pre record some of the, you know, my intro my outro, the mid roll drops, and be able to place them within the podcast with a touch of the button. I thought it was going to be hard because doing it just on my editing software. And I use Audacity is difficult to once you've recorded a podcast, split and move. This is so much more organic, and it works so well. It has me really excited about what I can learn and do going forward with this. Which fits with the mission of this podcast. All this to say stay young. Stay off your rocking chair on the front porch, find new experiences and enjoy them. It's the best way to keep from feeling the need to scream at the top of your lungs. Get off my lawn. And heck, by being aware, maybe I can avoid meeting a reminder that I'm rapidly headed down that road. Well friends, that's it for this week's edition of strife seek find. Thank you again for listening. If you'd like to join the discussion, or have ideas for future episodes, hop on over to the strife seek find podcast group on Facebook. Alternatively, if Facebook's not your thing, you can find me on Instagram at strife seek find podcast on Twitter. As at chance Whitmore five. We're even on email. The links for all those are in the show notes below. Until next time, my friends, keep seeking your own brilliant future