It’s About Time…

It’s hard to believe a month has passed since our last post. Time flies when there is not enough of it, and crawls when there’s too much. The Pandemic has been a test of this with the shifting of time usage during quarantines, etc. As it is said, “the only difference between a good haircut and a bad one is time.” This is truly a moment in time that allows for shifting and adjusting while maintaining constancy in life’s purposes in the midst of so much change.

Needless to say, the past month has been busy here in Colorado!

Along with the routine landscaping and property organization projects, and Jeff’s regular workload, another sober living home was added to the program, in addition to the one in our previous post. We feel like we’ve spent a lot of time moving things out, in, and around. The rapidly depleting bottle of Motrin is testimony to the conflict between all the furniture lugging and our aging bodies…. However, the satisfaction of enhancing places to help men in recovery salve their healing wounds keeps us going.

In a moment of possible early Alzheimer’s onset (forgetting the body aches of the sober house setups), we grabbed some time for a getaway to Rocky Mountain National Park and a hike to Sky Pond, a 10-mile round trip starting at 9,000ft to near 11,000ft and back. We were blessed with a cool day to hike and enjoy the splendor of the Rockies, which differ from the Wasatch and Sierra ranges we are more accustomed to. Hiking with a mask, off when alone and precautionarily on when passing fellow hikers is also a new hiking technique to adapt to. After a scramble up the side of a waterfall, the cirque at Sky Pond was another reminder that nobody does landscaping like Mother Earth. It was peacefully refreshing to rest at a glacier-fed pond near the base of the rocky columns and crags.

Upon our return the next day we started remodeling the “Man Cave,” the place (a former garage outbuilding) where the sober living guys hang out, have group meetings, and do their sobriety testing each evening. A week later the transformation is nearly complete and was capped off yesterday by being able to meet some families attending the family weekend program designed to learn about and provide proper support to their recovering loved ones, who were touring the facility.

There are small opportunities nearly every day to help other folks. Providing rides to people, assisting an elderly man who had fallen getting out of his car, making meals for others, etc. We share these experiences not to boast or pat ourselves on the back, but hope to encourage and inspire each of us to expand our daily view of life and do something good for others. This time of change and lifestyle reset is a good time to escape the self-oriented use of time and resources and redirect at least a portion of it outward. With an attitude of gratitude, the orientation of life’s latitude can change toward a path of increased happiness.

With only two more weeks here in Boulder, time is clearly of the essence in so many ways.