In Search of Life 3.0 | d’blank

Dear Coach Lou:  Well Lou, I have a plan. I know the original idea was to have a plan by next Spring, but I knew what I wanted to do, I'd given it careful consideration, and it just seemed pointless to wait another six months to make it official. Plus, it's going to take some work to implement the plan and if I start now I can use the winter to get organized and be ready to hit the ground run Dear Coach Lou: Well Lou, I have a plan.

Dear Readers: As regular readers may know, Coach Lou has taken off for a leisurely tour of Europe with her husband, Coach Andy, leaving poor me here to stew in my own juices while she drinks cappuccino and looks at old paintings. Really. Some people are just so self-absorbed!

Dear Coach Lou:   Well, the pace is picking up. I got back from Warren yesterday and leave for Florida tomorrow. I was heartened by your view last time that I'm making some kind of Life 3.0 progress as I ping-pong from place to place. There does seem to be some kind of logic to it all, although I'd be hard pressed to describe it.

Dear Coach Lou:   Well I've been so intently goofing off the past couple of weeks that I've got a lot of catching up to do. I traveled to the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont to visit my friends McRik, Dr. Green and their wives, the lovely and vivacious Gonzales sisters, and about ten of their kids, parents and friends. I stayed in the Greens' summer home, their retreat from life in London.

Dear Coach Lou: Those were some good ideas last time Lou. I'm going to spend a week in Warren at the end of the month and I'll start asking some more pointed questions while I'm there. Did you see the comments from our old friends Melanie and John on the Life 3.0 Facebook page? I love that we're getting our best ideas from people with whom we went to junior high school.

Dear Coach Lou:  How are you my friend? It has been a while. When last we spoke I vowed to cut back on my activities for the summer, with the exception of daydreaming, to which I promised to devote extra time. You ratified these as pretty good ideas, and I have followed through.

Dear Followers of Life 3.0:  Coach Lou has assured me that even though I am retired I am still entitled to a vacation, so I am hanging up my "Gone Fishin'" sign this week.  I’ll be doing a lot of traveling in the next few months, in addition to working on Life 3.0 and reporting back to you about it all.  This seemed like a good time to slip in a break. I think I hear the hammock calling my name now... 

Dear Coach Lou:  Well, if you ever want to leave a place without regrets I recommend that you arrange for the temperature to hover in the mid-90s with similar humidity levels for the last 3-4 days of packing, and let it peak on the day you are leaving town.   Man, I pulled out of the driveway and never even turned my head I was so glad to get out of there. Plus it was kind of weird.

Dear Coach Lou,

Oh man Lou, I got nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I've barely thought about Life 3.0 this week. All I've thought about are how many more boxes we need and how to pack so we can get some stuff out of storage easier than some other stuff. Introspection time has been hard to come by.