Come Visit Us!

 

Our Guest Room

Come visit my wife and I this year!

That's what I want to say today. I haven't blogged in months for a variety of reasons. The world can seem big and heavy and hard at times. Have you seen the news from Minneapolis? The stock market hits record highs, and yet our grocery bill stresses our budget. I'm reading a book on how to beat cynicism with hope, and one of the things it suggests is work on building relationships with people. 

Last summer, I got stressed one day and I stopped reading all of my text messages. Yes, I'm more or less not engaging with people that I care about and that care about me. It's weird. And unfortunately even as of this writing I have nearly 100 unread text messages. That used to be the most reliable way to get in touch with me, but lately, unless you are on a very short list (some days just my wife), it might not work. 

My wife and I have slowly been working on making our house into our custom home. We have two green houses in the back yard, we put in a patio, we put the book shelves into the guest room, she has started zero scaping our front yard for pollinators and to save water. One of the clear things that emerges as we have put work into our house is how infrequently we have guests stay over and spend the night. All of our local friends just drive home of course, but both of us have friends and family across the country, and it would be our pleasure to host some guests and save people some money. 

I know I'm not alone. I've had friends for years that don't respond to many text messages, and when I hit that point last summer that I stopped even opening them all, I got it, there is a lot going on in the world, and it takes some energy to open the message and read it. It feels like there is an obligation, that I might let the person down, so if I just avoid it, I don't have to deal with that. Of course, that's not true, I need connection in my life. I need to go rock climbing after work with my friends, even if that stresses the budget too.

Last fall my wife and I did an East Coast road trip, from Maine to Georgia and every state in between, and we saw a total of 22 different friends or family members on the trip. It was excellent on the days that we spent in other's guest rooms! Colorado is a great place to visit, and we're only 20 minutes from Boulder. So let us know if you come out, we can save you some money and spend a few evenings chatting. Despite my lack of action building relationships over the past year, I do want to continue being friends with my friends.