Tag: inertia

Why We Travel

Our family just returned home from a family weekend trip to the town of Frankenmuth, Michigan. Frankenmuth – as the name suggests – is a bit like a small town was scooped out of the Bavarian part of Germany and transplanted in Central Michigan. My wife and I stopped by Frankenmuth on our way to Traverse City in the summer and we concluded that this would be a fun place to bring the kids for our Christmas trip. I don’t think I’m spoiling the blog post here to tell you, dear reader, that we parents miscalculated the kids’ embrace of this little trip. Put simply, we missed the mark.

Scooped out of Bavaria

I started drafting this post in the hotel room the morning of our departure. As I sat down to write, three of our four kids were staring creepily into their personal device screens with headphones in. The older two kids were sharing a sofa, which means they were within 2 feet of one another, and yet they were in their own little worlds. As I watched them geeking out, I sat for a moment pondering the failure of this trip.

We reserved a suite in a hotel with a water park, replete with kids’ adventure areas, multiple water slides, a lazy river, and an old fashioned indoor pool and hot tub combo. Right next door was Bronner’s Christmas World, which is an out-and-out extravaganza of Christmas consumerism. If nothing else, it is worth a walk through to see the nearly countless ornament combinations in terms of color scheme and thematic character. The town of Frankenmuth is well-decorated year-round, and although it could be accused by more cynical travelers of being a bit of a tourist trap, it has a quaint charm that draws people in.

Before we think more deeply about this failure of ours, let’s first talk about the magnitude. Our daughter didn’t bring a swim suit. The two youngest boys brought swim suits, but each was at least one size too small. No one brought sandals or any form of cover up. In essence, this trip wasn’t really on their minds. All of the kids turned us down when we offered a walk down town in the well-lit evening to see the Christmas decorations and to pop in and out of the nearly 20 fun and unique shops on the main street. Instead, they opted to keep their noses in their individual devices in the hotel room. The three boys spent an hour in the water park. Our daughter went out with me the morning before we left to pick up breakfast for the family. But other than that, it was a pretty dismal showing.

Where did we go wrong? The last several years, we have had fun trips to some great destinations that they’ve really enjoyed. Have we lost them? Has the internet cyborg finally mind-melded with our children to the point of no return? I resisted the temptation to get angry and tell them off. “Your mom and I planned this trip for you and now you’re going to enjoy it!” But that’s self-serving. Yes, their devices can be like black holes, but we’ve overcome this digital inertia before.

In short, we missed the mark because my wife and I were drawn in to the quaintness of this town and we projected our 40-something perspective onto the kids. “Oh they’ll love it,” we told ourselves this summer. “We can take them shopping and get them tickets to the water park and they’ll have a blast.” The truth is that our kids mostly don’t like shopping and they rarely go for swimming these days. This caused me to start thinking about why we travel in the first place. Now wiser from a failed journey, I think I have it.

We travel so the uniqueness of the new experiences will pull us out of our routines and to challenge us to think differently about the world around us. Frankenmuth didn’t do that for our kids. Don’t get me wrong, Frankenmuth is a lovely town. But given our kids’ historical travels and experiences, there was nothing new enough for them to overcome the tractor beams of WiFi. Are they spoiled? Debatably, yes. Could we, rather, should we have predicted the outcome? Absolutely. Next year, we may not travel with the kids. We might be coming to the end of a cycle with them where our interests are just too different to pull together. However, if we decide to travel, the uniqueness of the new experiences must be enough to pull them out of their routines. Because if not, it isn’t worth the time and energy.

Let your hair down

Sometimes, you have to let your hair down. This is week three of my marathon training. Tonight I should have lifted weights while I let my legs recover from yesterday’s interval training. But instead, I came home, did a couple of chores, and then took my better half out to our favorite local eatery for Spanish wine and our favorite dishes.

Like the kid in We’re the Millers, I’ve got “no ragrets.” Not even one. We had a lovely evening and now tomorrow I’ll be doubly motivated to knock out my tempo run after another busy day at work.

Are you motivated after letting your hair down? Or are you more of an “inertia person” who once is at rest stays at rest?

Seeking Disorder

To say that this week has been “off” for me would be an understatement. Earlier this week I was apathetic about being apathetic. Later in the week I rashly injected some excitement into things by tearing a page out of the book of my youth. I think the two might be subconsciously related.

On Monday of this week I had a blog post 99% written about how I was having a ho-hum start back from vacation. On the work front, one of my team members did a great job of covering for me while I was at the beach. We have also been in a nice and predictable state of affairs in my department for some time, so I was feeling a bit apathetic about my transition back to work. On a personal front, things have also been very smooth. My wife and I have settled into the most comfortable relationship of our lives. We know what to expect from one another, we don’t harbor grudges or nitpick, and we work together to achieve a well-run household. But at the moment, we’re not striving for anything either. She’s between college classes, the kids are in a lull with their schedules, we’re done with vacation for a while, I’m not actively training for any upcoming races, so there isn’t a “next big thing” to work toward. As I was putting the finishing touches on that “things-are-going-too-smooth” blog post, my boss called to give me 5 new short-term assignments. Twenty minutes later, I opened the mail to find that I received a traffic citation by camera in a tiny village I drove through several weeks ago. The citation feels like a scam for various reasons so I’ll need to investigate further. So… I suppose the lesson here is if you’re feeling a little too bored about things going well, start saying it and the universe will deliver some excitement. None of it made me mad though. I actually welcomed the immediate purpose of the “to do” list.

Now nearing the end of this week, I’ve taken care of most of those new assignments, but I think there is still something brewing under the surface. On Tuesday, we were out with some friends and – while I don’t want to get into any details – I took some uncharacteristic risks that I’m not at all proud of. Then on Wednesday, I played in a league game with my soccer team and it got a little physical. Instead of brushing it off like I have come to do in my older, wiser days, I got “involved.” I wound up getting into a verbal battle and an under-the-referee-radar physical altercation with one particularly hot-headed center back. This is not who I am. At least it hasn’t been for the last 10 years.

So in the immortal words of Marvin Gaye, “What’s going on?” How on earth did I go from a calm dude before vacation to easing back into work to uncharacteristically risky behavior to a war of words and wrestling moves with a Cro-Magnon center back in the span of a few days? And more importantly, why?

I’ll probably need to do some additional soul searching on the topic, but I have a feeling that after having a few weeks of calm, quiet order, I’m actually craving some disorder. That’s bananas, isn’t it? But as I think about it, it seems to fit. At every given moment of every given day, I have everything I need. I’m not saying I’m rich and don’t want for anything, but I have a home, a healthy family, a loving wife, nutritious food in the pantry, clean water to drink, self-actualizing work, the freedom of self-expression, the ability to pay my bills and so on. On top of that, I’ve had an eventful first half of the year with several exciting trips and plenty of fun. The last few weeks have been almost mind-numbingly smooth. How on earth can there be any malcontent sown from any of that? But I am mindful enough to know that I’m currently walking around with a chip on my shoulder. Is it really so basic? Do I want what I do not have, even when what I have is at its essence, exactly what I want?

The mind is a funny thing.