A few years later

 I found my old blog today and was inspired. Twenty years have passed since I wrote this series of self-reflections. There were other blogs; my "davewrites" site went on for many years with me pontificating about random stuff, and there was the WestwoodBlog, what I imagined as a hyperlocal news website for my town.

That was over a decade ago. I stopped writing and started doing things. I served in my town government, and my career shifted into healthcare analytics. My kids are almost all in college now; the youngest is a rising senior. My wife and I celebrated our 30th anniversary with a trip to Paris last month.

We live in the best and worst of times. We find that while we are certainly not "rich," we can do some things now, like take vacations and travel. It's funny to run into people in their 20s doing things we have just discovered and allowed ourselves the freedom to enjoy. But it's the worst of times politically, not because I'm some woke leftist radical with "Trump Derangement Syndrome," (although yes), but because it seems to be a time when solving problems for the greater good has lost all credibility. I'm about 3/4 through a master's program in public health, and, sad to say, I think that topic is dead for the foreseeable future. I attended the American Public Health Association annual meeting last year and came back to an election where everything was repudiated. It's like if you had an internship with the Intendent and you came to work on Monday to meet your new boss, Robespierre.

Yes, we had a great week in Paris. I was so inspired that I spent a couple of months learning French before we left, am reading three books on the Revolution, and hoisted the tricolour at my house for Bastille Day, July 14. I found this recording of La Marseillaise and cannot get it out of my head. Always compulsive; that's me.

I read my old blog post about why I run, and it was great to hear that passionate voice from 20 years ago. I am still running, but not as fast. Still biking but not to work every day, since I've been working remotely for over 5 years. Many things in the past drove me to invest my time and energy. Many times, I've tried to organize it, schedule it, plan it, and make it a habit, but...the deal is that I don't know where the motivation comes from. It is an issue of finding it and running with it, not creating it.

So we shall start a new blog and see where this goes.