Dear Loo,
What a wonderful surprise awaited me when I got up at 4 am this morning!! Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter as a Founding Member! You are fabulous and generous and one of my dearest friends. How like you to not just support my writing but to send extra, allowing someone else to have a free paid-subscription. You are so thoughtful!
I thought about you yesterday. I took out my carry-on to begin packing for a trip to the English countryside and remembered our trip. I’m only going for a week while we traveled with our carry-on for three plus weeks in 2005 with Class 34 of the California Agricultural Leadership Program.
Tomorrow I’m going to Somerset, a past and present incubator for literature in England. I believe I’ll get inspired. I wasn't expecting to go anywhere this late in the year until Timi, a dear writer friend (you’d love her), reserved this amazing castle for a week-long writing retreat. How could I stay home?
So, why if I haven’t left yet (and am not leaving until tomorrow), am I up at 4 am? I’m time-shifting, getting ready to share a time zone with Somerset in England. I leave tomorrow and am manipulating my circadian rhythm to avoid jet lag. Timeshifter, the app is called, really worked for me on a trip to Uganda earlier this year. I start a few days before I leave, plunging ahead of my trip (and later, during it for the transition back home) into cycles of light and darkness progressively earlier each day so that within a day or two of arriving at my destination I'm synced, never (or hardly ever) having experienced jet lag.
I wish we had Timeshifter when we did our Ag Leadership trip through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Belgium in 2005. We barely had Facebook back then. I was ALWAYS sleepy on that trip.
And now before leaving for Somerset I’m thinking of you. What specifically?