When one life ends and another begins, it doesn’t have to be overnight. Sometimes it can take a few years before you know it. Parts of your past life come with you.

Do you know the story of John Kennedy (JFK) and his brother Joe pushing each other to their limits by swimming out into the ocean until one would turn back for fear of not getting back?

Doesn’t everybody do this? We explore to the limits of our time. A weekend is about 60 hours. You can go pretty far 60 hours at a time.

“48 hours in Nuevo Laredo”

That’s another story.

I always think about what I’m doing and what I see. That part is continuous through each ‘life’.

“Some things never change.”

Before you know it, you are on to the next life. It looks a little different. Styles change.

“Maybe more than that.”

It can be hard to notice when you are living through it.

“That first life was zero to 100! Really fast.”

It’s the end of the first life and the beginning of the second life. We do all the usual things. We even find our future wife in college. It is so ordinary and predictable it isn’t worth the effort to tell such a normie tale.

Once upon a time this was the American dream. At least ‘on paper’.

Here’s my version of family. I just want sled dogs. The Siberian Husky is the mascot of the University we went to.

“They used a Malamute in place of a Husky at the games. Fake!”

I didn’t agree with many of the things my school did. Their motto was ‘UW values diversity’. Schools are usually large and represent a lot of opinions so this statement by itself doesn’t mean anything. It is code for – we gonna spend money in places that don’t benefit you and promote ideas that can’t stand on their own. You can get through school without the ‘programming’ but you have to think for yourself.

“Imagine that! Going to school to learn to think on your own.”

Fortunately what you see on TV is not what is happening in the majority of classrooms. If you are there to learn it takes all you have to master the skills you are paying so much to acquire.

“Knowledge too. They have that. Libraries, computers, scientists, doctors, labs. Everything.”

Learning how to learn. It should be the first thing! It doesn’t really matter what topic. There’s are some basics you have to know first. When I learned to ‘learn’, the tools I would master hadn’t been invented yet and the principles they work on hadn’t been fully discovered yet.

“Best to learn how to learn. That will last through all your lives.”

We were very young when we discovered what we are, and who we are! I never thought other people got to tell me what I would become.

We still collect external validation but that is only to further a career. We don’t much care for the work of it. Work isn’t fulfillment, it is how we make money, to do the things that are fulfilling.

We can get pretty far too. Our range is more than a thousand miles. We go all the way to Canada sometimes and all over California, Utah, and Nevada.

All of the Rockies. We ski in the Grand Tetons and we camp in Yellowstone.

We’ve even run the dogs in Montana.

It’s not like we don’t do this every day. We have a 2.2 mile path around our neighborhood and through the park and by a school.

This stretch is along a major road and the school is just ahead on the right. We will turn there and run right by all the soccer moms and school kids lined up in the mornings.

I’m sure many thousands of people have seen us. We’ve done this every day for 10 years.

So that’s what we do. Over and over and over. We’ve been to so many places.

We’ve run throught the park so many times.

I can’t imagine how life can be better.

“But she does. The reason you can’t imagine it is because you aren’t in it.”

Well, that’s going to be a surprise. Until then we just keep going. We have 2 new dogs now, 3 total at this time.

These new dogs will be better trained than the first two. The first ones chewed the walls so we got these squeeky toys for them to chew instead.

“Trained killers.”

I found her and one of the dogs locked in the bathroom when I came home at lunchtime.

No blood. Could have been a heart attack!

Maybe just played with too much. No where to run 🙁

R.I.P. Fluffy.

This pair are better equipped also. And I can run up this hill with them, with a little help from one of them. They are so strong! And this is a glacier so they are running on cool snow.

One of these dogs loves the taste of dirt. I think it could be partially retarded. Can you tell which one has that look?

The mountains are what we have. I like the ocean a lot but we don’t have that. So this is what we do.

That’s why Hawaii is my second home. I’ve been there every year for a lifetime. On it, over it, and under.

We don’t have the ocean but we all swim. Every day all summer long. Year after year.

I say we. I mean me and the dogs. They do what I do. I challenge them to run faster, further, and to swim in the pool. In the water they compete against each other to follow me but on land they are always out front.

We still travel but I’m starting to feel like I’m dragging her along instead of being together. It’s starting to show. The things that made her happy aren’t anymore. Why? This half smile is the last one I’ll ever see.

It doesn’t matter where we go now. There’s something wrong at every place we go.

She’s even bringing the dogs down. They aren’t waiting for a walk, she never takes them out, I do that.

They will follow her around trying to bring up her spirits but they can’t. I can’t either. I thought she was tougher minded than this. Why can’t she pull herself out of it?

It’s all very predictable what happens next. You aren’t special if  your response is to burn everything so you can ‘start over’ or ‘yolo’. Is it only women that do this? Do they all do this?

Why is this such a stereotype? Who’s doing this to people? Why can’t they be happy with what they have?

“I know. It isn’t a mystery.”