The Plan So Far

The general breakdown for the Ireland trip is to spend the first day in Dublin exploring some of the items on this list: 30 Best Things To Do In Dublin (Ultimate Ireland Bucket List!)

The second day will be spent in County Antrim in Northern Ireland exploring:

• The Giant's Causeway
• Glenoe Waterfall
• The rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede
• and Dunluce Castle

Third day we're looking at visiting the scenic areas around County Kerry back in the Repulic of Ireland:

• Dingle
• Killarney
• Carrauntoohil

This is a more tentative plan as it's on the opposite coast from our base camp, so will depend on how well I do driving the first two days as to whether I feel up to a lengthy scenic tour across the Irish country side. I'll probably come up with a back up plan, just in case.

Fourth day we leave for London around 2pm, so we'll probably just spend the morning back in Dublin before heading to the airport.

I haven't yet worked out anything beyond the hotel for our time in London, which is really just a morning, but it will likely not be more than wandering around down town on foot feeling like The Doctor might pop up at any moment to announce the end of the world.

A Little To The Left

So planning a vacation after you've already started booking gets a little complicated, especially when it's to someplace you've never been, and neither of your companions have current passports.

The dates were the best dates for us, so that was a good start, and the passports are all now in hand, so that's two points. I did have to cancel the first hotel booking as the place was farther from the airport and where we wanted to hang out than I knew, but I got a full refund and found a closer place. A couple fouls then, but no strikes.

I've also committed to a rental car which is pegging my anxiety meter. New place, wrong side of the road driving with mirror image cars: I'm trying to convince myself it won't be as terrifying as it sounds. I'll be browsing a lot of web pages for advice, and I'm sure in the end it will be just fine, but right now it all sounds impossible.

I think the freedom and time savings will be worth it, though, long as I don't kill us all.

I've got a general sense of our activities outlined, a day in Dublin and another in County Antrim in Northern Ireland, I just need to nail down the flow, some specifics, and figure out the third day.

I also need to put together a grab bag of activities for our day in London.

Seriously freaking about the driving thing, though.

Up-Lifting

The positive effect weightlifting's had in my struggle with depression has been an unexpected surprise.

When I got back into lifting a couple years ago my goals were primarily to rehabilitate my lower back, mitigating ten years of evolving pain which kept me from sitting for more than 15 minutes at a time without pain, and secondarily to try, as I rapidly approached 50, to dial back the increasing speed with which I was becoming generally uncomfortable in my form, livery, and prospects of remaining active.

It took time and consistency for my back to start showing improvement, but to my surprise it's almost completely rehabilitated, allowing me to sit through a solid coding session or three hours of a play with barely a twinge.

I was even more surprised by what I've experience in terms of general fitness.

I figured at my age my best bet hopes were to tighten a few things up around the middle and chest and hopefully increase limb strength a bit. I didn't figure my middle age body had either the structural integrity or the natural chemical supply to do more than that. Not the case.

Like rehabbing my back, it took focus and time to start seeing improvement. I had to start low and slow, at points taking time to learn about proper form as I healed from self inflicted injuries of pride and ignorance, but as I gained momentum I found myself starting to exceed my original expectations.

In regards to depression, lifting gave me goals easily measured in their achievement, an associated sense of accomplishment, and a noticeable improvement in quality of life, things which all sparked brightly in the grey of my mind.

Most effective, though, was the way my progress contributed to a sense of there being a positive future available. As I began reaching, then passing past measures of personal strength, I went from seeing myself on that final slide towards the grave to realizing I had plenty of vitality left in me, I just needed to be more intentional and disciplined with it.

Seeing The Unseen

Gonna try to keep further Traveling Witch posts to my Instagram and Twitter accounts (unless something truly delightful crops up), but I did want to talk about why I'm suddenly playing with dolls.

I don't remember how I initially came across Jon Carling on the Twitters. It was probably Seelie Wight as she constantly shares all kinds of wonderful things, but it may have been one of the artists I follow there, I honestly don't remember.

The Traveling Witch is one of the recurring characters in Carling's fantasticly whimsical art, and occasionally he will hand cast some figurines from resin and sell them on his Etsy store. I mainly just wanted the odds and ends of art he includes in the packing with them, but I was happy enough to also have the figurine (which I'll refer to as TW from here).

I have no idea how the meme of photographing TW out in the world began, but there are hash tags and groups through the interwebs dedicated to it. Mr. Carling would sometimes retweet those posts and they struck a chord.

Here's the thing, these pictures of TW exploring the world in their diminuitive state, making the ordinary into the fantastical, creating myths from the shape of a branch, the color of a stone, is something I've been doing in my head since childhood.

A bed of moss, a hole in the ground, the crook of a tree, since I can remember I've imagined what these things would be like if I could shrink myself down and explore them at TW's scale.

I still can't do that, of course, but as I wander to and fro I can use TW as a stand in, capturing in pictures a sense of what I experience in my imagination. Vacation photos of my daydreams.

"I'm a Mess"

Went to see Noah Kahan at Emo's in Austin on 9/21/19 with Dawn, The Brook & the Bluff opening.

I haven't been to a lot of concerts in my time, a dozen maybe, and they've all been in stadiums or auditoriums or some performing venue with seats. This was my first time at a club style space with a stage at one end of a great open room edged by alcohol dispensing stations where the audience stood in a pulsing crowd for hours on end.

My social anxiety was dialed up from the moment we queued to get in, and the audience being heavily weighted towards young, college age women, served to heightened my sense of being ridiculously out of place.

The people watching part of me enamoringly observed:

• How the crowd interacted with each other and the performers
• How security and roadies sought to stay unobtrusive while doing their jobs
• How the different performers dealt with being the on stage object of hundreds of peoples attention.

The part of me which prefers to be hidden and unseen, however, was frantically aware I was very much neither, and fought tooth and nail as to whether and how I would be able to enjoy the experience. Will I dance? Sing along? If so, how loudly? Clap and holler? Take pictures and video like a fan boy?

I stayed deeply aware of my anxiety throughout the night, but each fight ended in at least a minor victory for acting in joy and joining with the rhythmic throng. The sense of community in singing together, moving together, riding the rhythm not merely of the music but of the experience we were sharing, was powerful and joyful.

Being old and broken, it was also painful. My back, knees, and feet had turned the entire lower half of me into a pillar of fire by the end of the night. The sense of community and joining isn't fully there, though, when everyone's seated and quietly observing, so while I'm not sure I'm physically up to doing concerts like this as often as I'd like, I am planning to attend at least a few more in the next couple of years. I mean, I always need more t-shirts.

Having A Bit Of This With JSON This Morning

Speaking of the Texas Shakespeare Festival Roadshow, at the Q&A with the actors after their performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", someone asked about when they had first gotten into Shakespeare.

An early question pegged the six of them as having gotten interested in performing between 6 and 12 years old, but five of them said they had avoided Shakespeare until college, two of them until grad school, the reason being intimidation.

They were afraid they wouldn't be up to the language, which was the same issue my Ma had expressed from the spectating standpoint when I first urged her to join my wife and I in our theater excursions.

I was quite surprised.

Quantum Adoration

Some held tight by magnetism,

some gravity;

They were together entangled;

Distance

no factor in effect;

never too far,

too close;

Wrapped each always in the other

so there was no other.

No other.

And He Likely Gets Paid Better

Watching Walter Jacob perform the most ridiculous, over the top, hilarious death scene as Bottom in the Texas Shakespeare Festival Roadshow's performance of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', I realized this grown man, in the same room at the same time as I, was garnering well deserved applause for behaving in the most absurd fashion.

This led me to a followup realization. I act just as absurdly on an almost daily basis at the office, but no one claps for me.

Where's the justice?