July 1st: Midway and Looking Down The Trail

I am probably the only person in the world that looks at July as a yearly benchmark. But for those of us that value each and every year it is absolutely appropriate to have goals and designated points to measure where one is relative to the year's objectives.

I am very lucky. I'm retired. This is, however, a blessing and a curse. I am not tied to a job so I have to create structure in my life so I can remain a productive part of society. The curse is that there is a lot of pressure because, you don't have an end date to work toward. In fact, I know no one that has, nor wants an end date. Unfortunately, we all have an end date......that part is certain.

So I have a lot to do, in whatever time I have left. I know it's not enough time, and therefore important to use time efficiently and effectively. I don't have a "bucket list". I simply plan to do on my very last day the very thing I try to do every day and that is immerse myself in the natural world. So July 1, 2011 is an important  time to reflect and reorganize.

This has been a very good start to 2011. I took a group to the Rio Grande Valley, Texas in January and we saw lots of  North American and south Texas specialties. I took a group to Southern Ecuador in February and saw some 450 species of birds. I had a great spring birding close to home in Ohio. And my annual trek around America's Heartland was another productive and interesting experience. This is the third best birding year I have ever had and it is only half over.

I need 33 species of birds to pass my second highest annual bird list in 2009: 818 species. My best year was 2004 when I logged 1079 species in what was a truly a momentous experience. It doesn't sound like much of a challenge to add 33 birds to the list. So why the plan?

If I were you, the reader, I would be saying to myself, what is the point of all this gibberish?

Here is the point: The sooner each of us takes control of our lives the more we will get out of life. Life is a gift. What you do with it matters.....a lot. It isn't about bird lists or some competition to be the best. It's about saying in the end "I took my life, its challenges and travails, its opportunities and joys, and embraced life in every way I could."

The moral of this blog, if a blog can have one, is: this year is half over and you've got another half left to make it whole. The opportunities are endless. I'll see 33 more birds. Maybe I'll see many more. It's all in the plan and there's a lot of nowhere to get in the middle of.

Cheers, Happy July First, have a safe and fun July Fourth, and maybe we'll cross paths somewhere in the middle of nowhere!