Dear June,
I have written you 10,000 letters extolling your virtues and asking to spend time with you. After decades of various discussions we finally have an opportunity to do so in a new way.
Unexpected opportunities were something people talked about when I was a younger man but I figured that if I missed some I could create them again.
Perhaps not the same but something similar that would be worth experiencing.
This time of year always got me thinking about it because June 1st always marked the beginning of summer to me, I didn’t need the summer solstice to make it official.
Especially during my time in university because by this point I had always finished all of my exams and there would be no school work until the following year began anew.
Eventually it changed because there was no more school and adult life for me meant I had a year round schedule that included some vacation, but never months on end.
I still dreamed of those days before when the inside of June had meant something very different than trying to decide if I would take a few days, a week or more during a particular month.
So I looked for bags of money, searched for an inheritance or a winning lottery ticket that would make it possible for me to spend as much time with June as I wanted to.
Such a thing would have provided a mechanism for time spent year round without a care but I never did find that bag of money.
But hope springs eternal.
A dear colleague and I met to discuss strategy and future plans. I looked at him and said this time around there is a mild handicap as the powers that be have changed the rules of the game.
We have the basic outline and experience with past changes and thoughts about current direction so it is not impossible to begin working on ways to build a strong path forwards.
There is faith in our personal and collective abilities to figure out solutions and past experience proves we are able to pivot, adjust and adapt.
That helps but planning for this reminded me that aspects of age have caught up with me. I am tired of doing such things and bothered by being asked to deal with nonsense built upon the need of another to justify their position.
Age takes but it also gives because I know when this feeling comes it is time to take time away from it. Time to recharge my batteries and that if I give myself that time I won’t feel as irritated.
So I am building that time in and even if I don’t get to wander in the kingdom as soon as I wish I will wander through other places that restore me.
****
The younger Mr. Wilner and I have spent some time discussing plans for our time back in the land of beaches and sunshine.
Conversations about where to go, what to do and who to see are prevalent because time is short. Part of me wants to head north and visit the place I spent so many summers at.
It has been a number of years since I walked through those hills and saw places where my name still lives and those where the echoes of the past reach into the present and perhaps beyond.
Got some questions if I’ll walk around and find the echoes of the future waiting for me as I suspect I might.
