I’m sipping my coffee, a bit groggy at the start of the work day. I spent a portion of the evening swapping messages back and forth with my Traveling Partner. He was out on the road hundreds of miles away. Connectivity wasn’t great, and we’d already had a couple phone calls interrupted mid-sentence due to lack of signal strength. The gist of it all was mostly to do with terrible weather, and a less than ideally fun experience for this shake-down journey to test the gear and how we load it.

…Some things could be improved, and a bunch of stuff did not turn out as planned…

My Traveling Partner arrived home in the wee hours. I got up to welcome him home, greet him, and hear the tales of a traveler. Unexpected flooding, muddy side roads, and poor visibility due to a combination of things, rendered the experience less than ideally fun or satisfying. It made sense to cut it short, make some corrections, and begin again. 😀 I returned to bed after we spent some chill time reconnecting.

…A new day begins…

And so, here I am with this coffee, and falling back on an existing routine, more or less. I’m not vexed by the change of plans. My Traveling Partner understands the relative importance of getting this “me time”, and he’s suggested that he’ll likely give his away time another shot – with a difference selection of trails and camps, and a different direction of travel, perhaps – in just a day or two. I eye my list of things I’d planned to do with my solitary time. Some of it I can as easily do when my partner is at home, it just requires me to make it an actual priority for myself. That’s a healthy exercise, itself. I definitely need more practice putting myself on my own list. lol Over time, my results have varied.

I watch the sun rise through the windows of the co-work space. I’m still groggy. The beams of morning sunlight illuminate the artificial forsythia on this deck, bringing it to life for a time. I sip my coffee and consider beginning again.