Amy and I have been in Homer, Alaska for the last ten days. Above is the view from the parking lot at the ocean in Anchor Point, which is literally “the end of the road on the western side of the US.”
Amy grew up here and it’s one of the places I go when I want to get some distance from everything. When we started coming here in the mid-1990s together, we’d literally have to disconnect in a lot of the places we hung out at. Today, you can only figuratively disconnect, as the internet will find you almost everywhere.
I’ve managed to turn off a lot of the distractions in the world over the past two years. Some, like Facebook, were easy. Others, like Google News, were harder. But even with the noise turned way down, it’s often hard to have perspective.
A 13 mile run to the end of the Homer Spit and back helps. Doing it two days in a row helps even more.
I took the weekend completely off from the computer. I read a lot, napped after my long runs, and talked to Amy. That was about it for the entire weekend.
As I settled into the Monday work rhythm, albeit four hours behind the east coast, I felt like my ten days in Homer has re-established some perspective.
Amy just said out loud, “We both seem cheerier than we did ten days ago.” True that.