When:  Before the 10:00 service at church
Weather: Cold with a heavy mist
Observations/Thoughts

• A jogger in a morph suit:  A jogger passed me.  Whatever his gender, I didn’t see the face.  He was completely bundled up.  From the knee down, he had snuggly fitting clothes.  The rest of his body was wearing layers with a hood covering his head. He had a leash with a medium size dog with black specks.  He waved as he went by.  I mumbled a distracted, “Good Morning.”  He mumbled a barely audible response.
• Morph suit with dad on a bike:  The other runner was doing faster than a walk to keep his dog entertained.  This was a legitimate runner.  To be running in this weather, he must have been training.  His had the same snuggly clothed calves with layers to his neck.  His gender was confirmable by his visible head.  I received the “on your left” warning.  My left hand went up in acknowledgment.  After pleasantries were exchanged with the runner, a man who was likely his father rode past on his bike.  With the temperatures dropping, dad was probably there to provide support should his training son hit some black ice.
• Tortilla Christmas Tree:  Somebody ate Mexican in the past couple of days.  The chips must not have been very good.  A bag of chips was dumped/thrown or otherwise evacuated out of somebodies car window.  The little styrofoam of salsa ended up at the top of the “tree”. The chips trailed the salsa.  If was far from forming a spectacular tree.  The colors were wrong and the shape was off.  After heading north along my walking path, my mist-speckled glasses were playing a variety of tricks on me.
• Freezing precipitation:  At the beginning of my nearly one hour walk, the mist was beading up on my jacket.  Somewhere along the way, the temperatures dropped enough I could no longer ignore the change.  The precipitation on my jacket was foregoing the beads.  It was now supporting a colony of ice crystals.  (This was not apparent until I got home and was able to remove my nearly frozen spectacles.)  I had to shrink the length of my steps on bridges and other treacherous places.  The breeze hadn’t fully completed its project to numb my face.  It had started to break me mentally as it started to chill me from the chin while slowly moving upward.  Kind of like an impending brain freeze with no ice cream required.

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This project is immediately traced back to this morning.  In reality, it precedes today by a number of years.  I am one of those people who make new years resolutions.   As the old resolutions prepare to turn to dust, I often do a review of those guilty arrows the previous year launches in my general direction.  My secret to writing resolutions has been writing them generic enough a minimum effort can allow them to be achieved.  Or, if I would “fail” in the goals, I would write a defense of my failure as last years resolutions are wrapped up and put permanently to bed.  I have decided the excuses are no longer good enough.

The ambitious goal is to write a blog post for every one of my daily walks.  (Mostly daily.)  If for some reason I don’t walk that day, I will note the excuse for my perceived laziness.  I will ramble about something else or bring out a “best of”.  Should I not have internet access on a given day or week, I will attempt to write a post and upload when the option is available.  The length of the post might vary depending on a variety of factors:

• Was there anything to see that day?
• Was my brain able to process and creatively retell anything I saw?  (I am hoping my standard for “creative” also improves as the year goes on.  Do I have more “good” or “bad” brain days?)
• Was I really serious about this goal?  Can I continue to maintain it as a priority? (I am not getting any younger.  If I am going to seriously attempt to write, I need to do it soon!!)

My undergirding motivation is to write what I think is important.  I will edit the unnecessary and likely over-indulge my own interest.  If others choose to read this, I will be grateful.  I am writing for myself.  Committing to a public “release” of a daily writing sample “should” play upon my sense of responsibility and accountability.  I will pretend it will be hard.  Secretly, I am anxious for the challenge.