LOOKING AHEAD

Photo by Pete Wuebker

One of the nicest things about spending any time at the cabin in Northern Minnesota is that we can draw the curtain on real life to our south and just be.  I am always amazed at how quickly time seems to pass when we are there.  Many of the tasks I plan to accomplish there remain undone.  Instead, I might spend a half hour watching a fox cavort on the ice in the lagoon, another hour snowshoeing around the point with my sister-in-law, and three hours sprawled on the daybed’s red woolen blanket and denim quilt, reading, reading, reading.

We’ll go into town and briefly hook up to the Internet at the Common Ground coffee shop, and I’ll be given a delicious chai latte in an enormous china mug.  We’ll put a matchbook under the table leg, and be heartily relieved that no one wants us, and there are no messages.

We’ll go back down the winding road into the woods and watch corny old movies.  Pete will auger through several feet of ice on the lake, and teach the kids from Georgia how to set a tip-up for fishing.  We’ll set out the dinner plates when the wine is uncorked, and after, clear the table for a game of cards or Monopoly.  Sleep comes under down comforters in brass or four-poster beds, and we awaken to fresh snowfall viewed through frosty windows.

Today we’re home after a harrowing six-hour drive in a Minnesota blizzard yesterday – for every respite there is a pricey return.  The champagne is open, and, as usual for us on New Year’s Eve, we’re settled in for the night.  Now is the time to look ahead.

We’ve made some great plans to continue this rewarding and enjoyable journey in 2009.  You’ll see some housecleaning and some organizational changes.  Time to breathe at the cabin always yields good thinking, and we’ve got a bucketful of posts ready to share.  We’ll be exploring more ideas like we did in Reliance and Wisdom, sharing books we love, traveling and talking about traveling – as we did in Runes, and continuing with our tongue-in-cheek Endangered Species series.  We’ll also be sharing our plans and activities as we add entrepreneurial endeavors and financially diversify as part of our work-life integration objectives.

Pete and I’ve thought and read a lot about conventional wisdom as it relates to blogging.  We’ve noted that blogging advisors invariably recommend that new bloggers select a niche and write to it.  In contrarian fashion, we instead decided we’d let the niche find us.  Our recent northern sabbatical reminded us that as individuals, we aren’t interested in or knowledgeable about just one thing.  Instead, we can categorize our talents, interests and strengths under several broad titles.  And so, this is what we will do.  If anyone has a name for this, presuming it’s a niche at all, we’ll gladly take it if you’d like to share.  Otherwise, we’ll continue . . . Passing Thru.

Wishing all of you a happy, healthy, productive, and brightly rewarding New Year!

Betsy and Pete