I went on a brief vaca­tion this last week (Sun — Wed), and of the camp­ing per­sua­sion. It was… inter­est­ing, though not the first time the fam­ily has been. Last year we went to the same loca­tion: Lake Quinalt in the Pacific North­west — my local stomp­ing ground. It was an adven­ture of sorts, though one that tested my men­tal strength at times. Chil­dren — espe­cially mine — are a frag­ile sort when out of their ele­ment, that do things and act in cer­tain ways that push you and pull you, make you smile and then tor­ture you in the same hour.

My daugh­ter is two. The first time we went, she was barely past one and she did not cope well with the great out­doors. We fig­ured, she was young, and pro­ceeded to try it again. Where last time she basi­cally had to be held the entire time (and it rained) we imag­ined this time she would love the warm(er) weather this time of year and run free. Well… that wasn’t quite what happened.

The first day was rough — warm, but rough. We were all tired, all hun­gry and all bewil­dered by the oppor­tu­ni­ties before us. My wife and I had to set-up camp, and the chil­dren had to enter­tain them­selves. They did this well and got wet and got happy and got every­thing in-between. Unfor­tu­nately, and unbe­known to us, my daugh­ter was slowly falling apart inside and bal­anc­ing on a thin-line between; “I’m hav­ing fun!” and “SLEEP! Where art thou!?”

A lot of cry­ing ensued, but she napped even­tu­ally. My son and I ran into Lake Quinalt as quickly as we could and enjoyed the weather. My daugh­ter woke up, we ate and yadda yadda. The rest of Day 1 was his­tory. Day 2 was bet­ter, we vis­ited the Largest Spruce In The World, as per my wife’s request and again we enjoyed the warm weather, the lake and a fire made my myself from noth­ing more than a flint and the nat­ural resources of the rain for­est we resided in. I felt very Man.

Day 3 started with wash­ing bod­ies and clothes. That lasted some time and we wanted to go on a trail hike later in the day, but the weather (and atti­tudes) were fleet­ing and not intent on work­ing to make it hap­pen. We relaxed as best we could, burnt more wood on the fire and fin­ished the day.

We began Day 4 with a half notion to stay, but more com­mit­ment to leav­ing ear­lier than the for­mer. We ate a great break­fast born from a fire-top stove and packed up. The trip back was long (we’re talk­ing 4+ hrs with two kids) but both were excep­tional… parhaps the reward of being home was enough to keep smiles on faces and atti­tudes positive.

A couch never seemed so inviting.

We returned yes­ter­day, and although I ques­tion any inten­tion to re-visit camp­ing whilst the chil­dren are still young, I did enjoy get­ting out there and the mem­o­ries of the adven­ture will stay with me, I just wish my daugh­ter could have been… hap­pier.

So now… I have been alone for an hour or two today and my mind has won­dered to Ran Red once again. I was talk­ing about the def­i­n­i­tion of an entre­pre­neur on the drive home and my mind wan­dered to writ­ing — being a writer, or hav­ing writ­ten a sin­gle thing: the con­stant vs. the one-off. ‘Which am I?’ I won­dered and still do today. I need to fin­ish Ran Red before I start to resent myself.

I am try­ing to think of what it was that had me writ­ing every day and I think NPI showed me that I need a tar­get, a daily tar­get. It’s no good try­ing to write per week because I seem to fall over the fringe of the hori­zon and keep push­ing and adding the num­bers to make up ‘on the week­end’. Which is never my good writ­ing time.

Per day, I need to push myself and re-see my Xbox and Tele­vi­sion Sto­ries as rewards and not pro­cras­ti­na­tions! Some­times I won­der if my enjoy­ment of them is equal to the irri­ta­tion I have of not pro­gress­ing my book. When one is greater than the other, and the other clouds your focus, how do you see the woods for the trees?