Lately I’ve gotten into the habit of getting up once every two hours or so to leave my computer for a little while and do something else… anything.  During the day I generally read, cook, eat, walk the dog.  However my favorite time is always my nightly walk.  Every night between 2am and 4am I like to go on a walk down the road about a quarter mile to the creek.  It’s not a terribly long walk, or extensive by any means… but I love it.  The cool night air, the stillness, but most of all the sounds.  When you come from being in my room with my computer running four 120mm server fans, music during the day from Brittney’s room, the resonating sounds of shots being fired off in Counter Strike: Source when I’m not busy working… it’s nice to leave it all for a while and be in silence… Only there is no silence out here only softer, more gentle noises, pleasurable sounds slowly fill the air as I quiet my mind and become more adapt to their environment.

One of my favorite sounds is the creek at the end of my walk.  I generally go down to the bridge where you can hear the soft whisper of the creek beckoning anyone within earshot to come and enjoy it’s peacefulness.  From the bridge the creek only whispers to those who pass by, not forceful or abrupt, and missed by many.  Though, when you go down to her, she tells a different story.  Simply crossing the railings of the bridge she becomes more undeniable, crawling down the rock wall to stand at the waters edge her voice bubbles, and rushes.  She speaks louder, words of days gone by, words of adventure, words of excitement.  I like this part of my short journey most because the creek will only whisper to you from afar, she’s not forceful or mean with her message, but when you hear her cry and go down to her, she’ll tell you a different tale.  She’ll talk to you about everything that you’re missing, things that she’s experienced, things that should not be missed.  I find this to be the most important part of my day… even though I can’t get out and have adventures every day, I do like to hear the tales of them, it helps me to be prepared for days when I can experience them for myself.

When I was younger we used to have adventures… used to go camping, three wheeling (we never had the money for fancy four wheelers :-P), go carting, shooting… all kinds of great adventures… then things got expensive, things broke to never be fixed, people died, land was sold, there wasn’t anywhere left to go shooting or riding.  I grew adapt to the changes and didn’t really get all worked up about missing the adventures anymore.  I eventually settled for the adventures of being online!  I won’t say that it was 100% bad… I wouldn’t have the job I have now if it weren’t for that time.  For two years I spent just about every waking hour on DailyTech, Engadget, various other smaller tech related websites, and over 150 forums… I learned the tech business inside and out, backwards and upside down… It’s helped me greatly for now working with Viacom, and doing my own sites.  But it’s good to get away from it all for a while.  I need the creek to keep alive, to keep active.  The creek helps to wash my mind, to cleanse it of all the tech jargon that fills it to the brim every day, to forget about the world of gigabytes, megahertz, terabytes, and teraflops, floating point units, overclocking, water-cooling, RAID, and front side buses.  I probably know more about how a computer, and the internet works than any of my regular readers would ever care to… but it’s got me this job, and it’s helped me to stay busy at times… There still comes a time when I have to escape it all and remember the beauty placed around me, the artistry of what God does on a regular basis.  The instruments he plays in the water.