Just kidding. I’m not actually weeping but hey, the thought occurs to me that I might have taken a wrong turn. Nearly four months ago, I pulled the pin on what had been intended as a ten-year project. My Big Decade, running from age 60 to 70, was meant to stock each calendar year with varied but precise daily challenges, various Big Years. But I ran out of steam and I was repeating myself and … well, maybe the original idea was a crock? So I cancelled the enterprise halfway through.
Now, a while later, I reckon I’ve lost something. Without obsessive daily pressure on my obsessive psyche, I’ve gone backwards in certain areas. I’ve lost fitness and am drinking a tad too much and my weight balloons – is this due to the pandemic or lack of a fitness/wellbeing Big Year? I’ve dropped all the little daily tasks that previous years had witnessed – am I now set in my ways? Some of the original romantic ideas behind the Big Decade – do a Tough Hikes Big Year, Andres, or why not a Global Birding Big Year? – are now just youthful memories, and isn’t that a damned shame?
Should I set off again? Should I harness my innate desire for daily structure, for structured challenges? I don’t know and I’m blessed if I perceive how to even contemplate this maverick notion.