My teenage son wants to move to the snow. He’s tired of the balmy beach life where the temps rarely go below 40 degrees and where golf carts are street legal. Over the years, in his young mind, he’s determined that coastal people (read, girls) tend to be shallow and flaky and spending all afternoon surfing is a colossal waste of time. A dedicated gamer and builder of Gundam figures, he’s become a night owl, believing his creativity grows and thrives in the dark.

His wish may come true within the year as he’s shown an interest in a technical school based in Wyoming. The school is nationally renowned for its specialized curricula and ability to showcase its graduates to future employers. Still, winter temps often dip into the minus double digits and when we were there last week, we experienced a frosty 4-degree morning! But my son—who said he’d never felt so cold in his life—was duly impressed with the downhome folks who had snow-plowing utility vehicles on their properties rather than golf carts.   

Regardless of what path we eventually choose for his post high school endeavors, we were happy we visited and proud of ourselves for believing we could live in a state that has many more cold days than warm ones.

Greeting Card Landscapes

Because we were in southeastern Wyoming, we impulsively opted to drive another four-plus hours to Mount Rushmore, a place that has long been on my bucket list. Breathtaking and so worth the effort, it turned out to be the highlight of our trip. The weather was perfect—mid-40s—and the snow-laced monument added magnificent accents to our photos. We also voraciously devoured scoops of vanilla ice cream (for breakfast) made from Thomas Jefferson’s famous recipe.

The 560-mile round trip from Cheyenne offered landscapes I’d only previously seen in holiday greeting cards. Endless miles of snow with only an occasional vehicle on the roads and highways. The extreme opposite of Southern California. Even as I soaked up the splendid scenery, my mind wandered to those things I’d purposefully put off before leaving home. One, writing my March Blog and two, not following up with a new contact for marketing my novels.

Lack of concentration and motivation are bad excuses for not completing one’s tasks, but they’re especially lousy excuses when it comes to writing. Yet I used both. I was obsessed with making sure everything was in order with my day job—executive recruiting—before leaving while preparing and packing for the trip. I told myself to focus on the most important thing—visiting the school in Wyoming—and when we returned, I’d tackle the writing part. I vaguely even promised myself to write my blog while on the trip, knowing full well that would never happen.

Mind Games

I hate procrastinating because eventually I will have to accomplish the task anyway. And in the end, I’ll feel even more stressed had I not just done it in a timely manner in the first place!  So, as I write this blog, having put off last month’s, I am stressing about the main component to my writing career: marketing myself and my work. I tell myself all the time I’m not getting any younger and the longer I procrastinate, the less energy I’m going to have to do it.

But last week I was encouraged when I heard Donald Trump relay an anecdote to an interviewer about age and age-related accomplishments. Forget your personal opinion about our 45th President for a moment because what he relayed resonated with me. Trump said he has a wealthy friend who made most of his fortune between the ages of 80 and 90, indicating that so long as the mind is active and clear, anything is possible.

Not that I want to make a fortune—it would be nice but not necessary to my happiness—or that I want to wait till I’m an octogenarian to do anything worthwhile. I’ve done plenty in my life that I’m proud of, but I always strive to do more. So, I’ll concentrate on what Trump relayed about his friend and put my nose to the grindstone, so to speak.

As my friend Andrea R. says, stay frosty my friends!