Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

Later today I begin the Great Antarctica Adventure. I’ve read all the preparatory material—at least twice. My camera equipment is packed. Batteries charged. Clothing checked against my master list and set aside. Bird books studied. Google translate loaded onto phone (to make up for my nonexistent Spanish skills). Twenty-five days’ worth of medicine set aside. Passport and cash in wallet. Boarding tickets printed out.

I’m ready to go, already . . . except for one thing. I’m not ready to give up my connection to the internet. We’ll probably have internet access in airports and hotels, but for the nineteen days we are on the ship, it is unavailable—at least at a price I want to think about.

I’ve been working on curbing my obsession to the news of the moment. That’s gone about as well as when I tried to quit smoking by gradually cutting down. Something would happen and poof (or puff), I’d be back at my two-pack a day habit. I’m wondering if constant irritation over the news isn’t as dangerous as my smoking habit was. So, I’m going cold turkey. If there’s a newspaper available at port stops, I’ll catch up, but no more checking eighty-seven times a day to see what . . .well, you fill in the blank; I’d just get upset again.

I’m giving up Facebook, too, but only for the trip. I’ll go missing to my 886 friends (as of this writing), and they will go missing to me. I won’t experience three and a half weeks of their lives, because—and I’m just being honest here—I’m not going to check my friends’ back posts when I return. That admission may even cost me a few friends. You mean I don’t care enough about them and their cat Fluffy that I won’t check out each cat shot, each annoying GIF, each political rant. Yep, and I won’t be able to celebrate your book launch or new grandchild, either. When I return to Facebook, it might be like reading a Russian novel and discovering six pages from the middle are missing. I’ll just plow ahead. I’ll miss about 0.08% of each person’s total life. Sure, some important things will happen, but not many—the effect over my total friends is about 2/3rds of one life.

Admit it—you won’t miss my occasional math-geek or writer-geek post, either. Maybe I’ll schedule one or two, just to remind everyone I’m still alive. I have a Writers Who Kill blog due while I’m traveling, and I turned that in ahead of time.

I won’t waste a second mourning the loss of not having access to my Twitter feed.

Email is something else. I remember when all important communications were delivered by the US Postal Service. Back in those distant times, it might take a week or more for a letter to move from sender to receiver. Only businesses used express mail, and faxes were of low quality, slow (two pages a minute) and were sent over long-distance lines you had to pay for by the minute. Oh, and remember telegrams, with their pre-Twitter form of clipped communication as every letter was expensive. STOP.

I’m a writer – what will happen if an agent or publisher wants to contact me? Or a book club wants to schedule me for a meeting? Or someone wants to buy a signed paperback? I’ll employ an automatic responder: “Sorry, it will take me some time to respond to your email. I’m traveling to Antarctica. Be back on 2/22.” Actually, I won't. Turns out my email program (Thunderbird) doesn't have a way to do that and anyone who writes a message to an account with @jamesmjackson.com will hear nothing from me until I return.

That reminds me of the time my boss insisted he have a way to contact me while I was on vacation. I was whitewater rafting down the canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers. I thought a while and then told him that I supposed he could hire a helicopter rescue company to track down our raft and airlift me from the sandbar or beach we camped at that night.

Today, however, we’re used to being connected 24/7. One might still be forgiven for not answering an email for a day or two if you’d just had quadruple bypass surgery, but otherwise, we expect immediate responses. Well, that just isn’t going to happen. Unlike my days working for corporations where there was someone to back me up, I’m a sole proprietor. It’s me or it’s not.

If that costs me some book sales, so be it. I’m confident the potential loss won’t cause me any sleepless nights or worrisome days. To find out, you’ll have to wait for my return.

A version of this blog first appeared on the Writers Who Kill blog on 1/28/18.

Bucket Lists

In 46 B.C. Julius Caesar did away with a flawed lunar-based calendar and introduced the Julian calendar, based (as the Egyptians had been doing for a very long time) on a solar year. He didn’t get it quite right, which required the change over 1,600 years later to our current Gregorian calendar. All of which is to say that we should blame Caesar for having to start anew during the days of shortest daylight hours instead of (say) near the vernal equinox.

I didn’t find anything that linked Caesar to the common practice of setting (and mostly ignoring) New Year’s Resolutions. For a time, I tried to be a maverick and set goals commencing on my birthday. That didn’t seem to work any better, and since the IRS insists that I use a calendar-year basis for my personal and business taxes, I’ve reverted to calendar-year based goals. And lists.

I’ve mentioned before that I am a person who keeps lists. Lots of lists, but fewer than there used to be. I still maintain my books read (80 for 2017). It has the practical purpose of answering the question: did I already read this? I also maintain a lifetime bird list, but I’ve discarded the practice of keeping track of the number seen each year, and in each state, and on my property, and . . . I no longer care.

One list I continue to maintain has nothing to do with calendar years; it’s a bucket list. In case you are not familiar with the term, it means a list of things you want to do or experience before you die (or “kick the bucket”).

My bucket list has changed over the years. Some things have come off because I completed them. My trip to Alaska in 2008 completed my objective to visit all 50 states. And in 2014 when we visited Newfoundland/Labrador, I finished off my Canadian providences list. (I still hope to visit all the Canadian territories, and that remains on my bucket list.)

I consider my list as a way to remind me of some of my inspirational goals, but I don’t allow it to exert pressure on me. (You’re past Social Security eligibility age and you still haven’t done that? Shame, Jim!) Over the years, I removed some items from the list because they are no longer possible to do, at least in the way first intended. I had to scratch “Hike the Appalachian Trail” when my shoulders deteriorated to the point it was too painful to carry a heavy pack for a full day, let alone three months.

I’ve flown in a hot air balloon and helicopter, but still want to fly in a glider plane during hawk migration. I’ve been to the Arctic, but not to Antarctica—that is about to be rectified.

We’ve booked passage on a birding tour that will take us to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island, and the Antarctica peninsula. We leave at the end of January and will be gone for three-plus weeks. I can’t wait to experience the remote habitats, see birds I have only visited in zoos, and experience—well, who knows exactly what I’ll experience? That’s why I’m going.

What’s on your bucket list and what do you hope to scratch off this year? (Oh, oh – there’s that calendar year thing raising its head again!)

~ Jim

Originally published on Writers Who Kill Blog 1/14/18