Do something nice for yourself

Picture: Sunset light on Cathedral Peak reflected in Upper Cathedral Lake, Yosemite National Park, California

Last night I was up until nearly 3:00am working. One of the long overdue items on my “to do” list was to upgrade my wordpress installation of this weblog. Lately when I’ve been talking about long overdue, it’s been in reference to things that I haven’t done or needed to do since my accident last February. But no, this is really overdue; like in the neighborhood of a year and a half. In WordPress, that’s like three or four versions ago.

This is my first post under the new version, after successfully navigating the manual upgrade instructions. (My old version had no auto-upgrade option.) I was so happy when I re-activated the last set of plug-ins and everything appeared normal and functioning properly.

Anyway – the last line of the upgrade instructions were to “Do something nice for yourself.” – Today in California, we’re having a very unusual, unseasonal low pressure system moving through part of the state. Weather reports are actually calling for snow in the Sierra. So while driving home from dropping my kids off at Summer DayCamp, I thought about how much I’d love to be up at an alpine lake to catch a summer snowstorm moving through the mountains. But since I can’t do that today, I thought I’d do the next best thing, which is share the point about how important it is to sometimes reward yourself with something you really want.

This was a photo I really wanted. Years ago, my wife and one of my best friends left the Bay Area at 4:00am. We had a pancake breakfast at the Tioga Resort at 9:00a, and began hiking by 11:00. We got to the lake during a summer thunderstorm, so we all took cover under our ponchos and took a nap. My friend had hiked in with his acoustic guitar strapped to his daypack. When the rain stopped, the music started as we sat along the edge of the lake. Sunset came and went, and we started our hike out. We got back to my car at 10:00pm, and were having a late-night breakfast back home in the Bay Area by 2:00am.

A momentary escape from the ordinary, from routine, from ‘normal’ is a reward.

See this and other images in my special Yosemite Print Collection.