Sunny bright mornings

Sunny bright is an often perfect description of a lowcountry daybreak, usually followed up by pale moonlit nights. One of the things that continues to strike me, even after almost five years here, is how much more daylight there seems to be on average. The sun seems to come up earlier and, even more noticeably, it seems to stay lighter, even in the depths of the winter season

While we did get a very quaint, picturesque coating of rare snow the other evening, it quickly melted and was far less impactful than what happened almost exactly a year ago. The “morning after” was one of those sunny bright mornings, and even though the temperature was far colder than usual, by the afternoon almost all of the snow had disappeared entirely.

While I have never been clinically diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder (interestingly and appropriately shortened to SAD), sunlight and warmth have always lifted my mood and remains, as you faithful readers know, the main reason we sought out this little town of ours.
Father Time continues to mess with my psyche and while I was looking very much forward to living in a place where year round outdoor exercise was easy, some of that has been blocked by some small hiccups.

Never one to just let it go, I looked for and found a fabulous addition to being active. SupernaturalVR, a full blown workout program using a virtual reality headset. My lovely wife, Sue, started it over a year ago and kept urging me to try it. It took a while for this blockheaded boy (sorry for being totally redundant), to catch on, but I did and now I love it and look forward to it every day.

A funny thing happened along that road, the coaches, none of whom I have ever met, became friends, almost family. Social media allowed me to follow their journeys outside of the game and along with the entire online community of similar minded users a real bond developed.

Then, out of nowhere, a few weeks back, a ton of bricks dropped. The entire coaching and development team was dropped. The program announced that there would be no new programs. They were in the habit of releasing a series of new workouts every Monday and everyone looked forward to the “new stuff.” The coaches immediately took to social media and encouraged the “family” to “ride it until the wheels fall off.”

The large community of users (Sue and I among them) went through a period of sadness, though bolstered by all the world wide users who kept the encouragement going. As of this writing, it is still going strong, though the worry that it will one day not be there when the headset is fired up is always hanging over like the sword of Damocles.

Back to the sunny bright mornings: I am beginning to understand (only took me 73+ years), that sometimes when things are beyond your immediate control, the best option is to ride the unicorn into the sunshine and let it take you where it is going. Whether you are out in the sunshine or just watching it from afar, I hope it makes you smile.

Time to let Dan Fogelberg play us out with the concluding part of his song Netherlands (especially since I borrowed the title of this piece from part of that),

“Once in a vision
I came on some woods
And stood at a fork in the road
My choices were clear
Yet I froze with the fear

Kevin Fitzpatrick is a retired teacher who, along with his wife Sue (also a retired teacher) is enjoying exploring life in the lowcountry and all it has to offer.