THE THOUGHTFUL WANDERER TURNS FIVE TODAY

POST # 235

A MAGNIFICENT APPROACH TO MY CURRENT HOUSESIT

Today, The Thoughtful Wanderer turns five which means that I have been doing this house/pet sitting gig full time now for just over five years.  I departed Vancouver on October 1st, 2011 and wandered off to Orcas Island in Washington state and I've been wandering ever since then.  What a life.  And what fun it has been.  Along the way I have been extremely fortunate to get to know some wonderful two-legged as well as four-legged animals.

I decided to look back through some of the blog posts and include them here.  There are five in total, all with the same date as today, with only the year changing each time.

LAKE OSWEGO, OREGON

The very first post was written when I was in Lake Oswego, Oregon.  I fell into this housesit as a result of my housesit on Orcas Island.  Cathy, whom I was housesitting for on Orcas was renting at the time.  The landlords came up to visit from Lake Oswego, and when they arrived, I happened to be out in the garden, weeding.  No doubt I scored a few points with them, so they offered me a housesit at their place later in the month, and they even covered the cost of my transport.


http://wherespaulnow.blogspot.com/2011/10/thoughtful-wanderer-begins.html



ORCAS ISLAND, WASHINGTON STATE

Fast forward exactly one year, and I found myself settled in back on Orcas Island.  Something that I wrote back then, still holds true, and I've included it below.

"This year of housesitting has also allowed me to live the simple life that I find so attractive and stress free. If I have said this once I have said it a thousand times,
"as long as I have a roof over my head and a full belly, I really don't have anything to complain about." I still feel that way, maybe even more so in light of the events of the past year. Now, I am simply happy to just have another day to spend, and so it is extremely easy for me to wake up every day with a smile, knowing that I am alive and that I have another opportunity with the day ahead to just breathe the air and enjoy my life for as long as it will last."

For those who want to read the entire entry it is included here, and the comment above "in light of the events of the past year" refers to my potentially fatal fall down a mountainside on March 4th, 2012.

http://wherespaulnow.blogspot.com/2012/10/happy-blogiversary-paul.html



THE BIG ISLAND OF HAWAII

I do get around.  Even though I had been to Hawaii a few times, this was my first and so far only visit to the big island.  I was a guest of my friend, Mary and I was only meant to be here for a couple of weeks, but my follow up housesit which was going to be back in British Columbia, fell through, so I stayed here for about six weeks total.  The blog entry is short, and I included in it a link to an article about the ocean.  Back then, I didn't know how to attach a link properly, so I have put it here as well.

The blog post:

http://wherespaulnow.blogspot.com/2013/10/two-years-on-and-pacific-ocean.html


The link to the article about the Pacific Ocean, and it describes a solo sailor's voyage.  Being a sailor, I can highly recommend reading it,  in spite of the fact that the author explains the sad state of the oceans, in this case, the Pacific.

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken/?cs=12



BEND, OREGON

The blog anniversary for 2014 was spent with my friend Mary (mentioned above) at her new location in Bend Oregon.  I was in between housesits,  which provided me with the opportunity to spend time with her.

http://wherespaulnow.blogspot.com/2014/10/nepal-blizzard-and-genoa-floods.html



DUNCAN, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Well to be exact,  I was just west of the town of Duncan out on a small acreage.  This was a wonderful place to be.  It was election time in Canada and I think I wrote some pretty good words about how useless elections are.  That's my humble opinion of course.  Now here we are a year later, and in the USA where I am currently sitting, it's all about the Presidential election.  I could just change the names of the politicians, and copy and paste the words from last year's blog and it would fit quite well.

http://wherespaulnow.blogspot.com/2015/10/another-pointless-election-that-avoids.html

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Naturally I think that it's worthwhile to re-read all of the above posts, however I am biased in that regard.  I leave it up to the reader to decide.  I suspect that the content of some of my blogs has turned away some of my readers, but that's ok, and it is of course their choice.  After all, there are only so many hours in the day, and others may find that they have more important things to do.


So now what?  Another 5 more years of blogging in front of me?  I rather doubt it, but I can't be sure.  It's not that I don't enjoy doing this four times/month, but I do wonder whether or not I'll be around to complete the task.  Don't get me wrong, I'd love to believe that this blog will be going for many years into the future, and that I will be happily typing away at the keyboard until I'm very old and very gray or bald, whichever comes first.  However, I can think of a few things that might interrupt this little blog ritual of mine.  Let's see:
-habitat loss due to abrupt climate change
-chaos resulting from energy depletion, therefore no food at the grocery store
-WW111 (and this one would be nuclear) because of the crazies in Washington DC.
-heart attack
-unexpected accident

No doubt the list could be made much longer, but the length of it doesn't matter all that much.  Death can come at any time, which is all the more reason to try and squeeze as much life as one can out of each moment.  It's actually a good thing to think about one's own death because it makes life all that much sweeter, and what could be wrong with that?  So these days I appreciate everything even that much more than I ever used to.  And I mean appreciate everything.  The fresh air to breathe, watching a hummingbird in flight, the light shining on a tree leaf, clean water to drink, everything.  So it's a conundrum.  The more one contemplates death, the more alive one feels, and for me at least, the happier I feel as each day arrives.  Try it sometime.

I was reminded recently of the fifth item on the list above, that being an unexpected accident.  In this case it was a plane crash which caught my attention.  It made the news primarily because one of the occupants of the aircraft was the former Premier of Alberta.  However, one of the other occupants was a person by the name of Sheldon Reid.  A very long time ago I played ice hockey with a Sheldon Reid in Calgary, my home town.  Of course I don't know for sure if this was the same person, but his age was about the same, so it is possible.  The point of the story is that all four people on this aircraft wouldn't have thought that October 13th, 2016 was going to be their last day.  One never knows, really.

Now I suspect that some of my readers might think that I am being morbid, but I don't happen to subscribe to that point of view.  Life guarantees death.  That's all you really need to understand, and if you can come to grips with that fact, then appreciating the precious moments that we all have, whether they last only until I finish typing this sentence, or for decades into the future, seem all that much more precious indeed.

As far as today goes, well, so far so good.  I have a little mental check list that I go through, and if I can put a √ by each of the seven items on the list, then the odds are pretty good that I will get through today.
Here is the list:
1-clean air to breath
2-clean water to drink
3-food to eat
4-body temperature not too hot
5-body temperature not too cold
6-not critically injured
7-not critically ill

Of the seven items, it's really only the last one on the list which is somewhat of a wildcard.  Your heart could stop beating at any moment, and that's not something that you can anticipate.  I do what I can to minimize this by doing regular exercise and trying to eat properly, but hey, there's no guarantee that doing those two things is going to extend how many heart beats that are left.  However, my current resting heart rate is around 47bpm so that's pretty healthy.

Well, I've rambled on a bit on this blog, so it's time to wind things up.  I think I'll finish off, the way I began, with a nice photo.  This was taken a couple of days ago down at the lakefront near where I am currently housesitting.  This was the first I had seen the sun for many, many days and I was happy to be there at that moment to enjoy the scene.

LAKE WHATCOM

living a life of profound acceptance,

Paul

The Thoughtful Wanderer